The Black Muslims In America

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OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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The Black Muslims
in America

by C. Eric Lincoln

Foreword by Gordon Allport

Beacon Press Boston

Copyright © 1961 by C. Eric Lincoln
All rights reserved

Published simultaneously in Canada by

S. J. Reginald Saunders and Co., Ltd., Toronto

Library of Congress catalog card number: 61—5881
Printed in the United States of America

This book originated as a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Graduate School of Boston University

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks use of material from
the following sources: E. D. Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult Among
Negro Migrants in Detroit," American Journal of Sociology (July
1937-May 1938); A. E. Fauset, "Moorish Temple Science m America,"
in J. M. Yinger's Religion, Society, and the Individual, Macmillan;
E. Hoffer, The True Believer, New American Library; Mike Wallace
and Louis Lomax, "The Hate That Hate Produced," Newsbeat
(WNTA-TV); Sepia, November 1959.

In the autumn of 1956, I was teaching courses in religion
and philosophy at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia. This study
of the Black Muslims began when I read the following appraisal
of Christianity in a term paper submitted to me by a senior stu-
dent:

The Christian religion is incompatible with the Negro's aspirations for
dignity and equality in America. It has hindered where it might have
helped; it has been evasive when it was morally bound to be forthright;
it has separated believers on the basis of color although it has declared
its mission to be a universal brotherhood under Jesus Christ. Christian
love is the white man's love for himself and for his race. For the man
who is not white, Islam is the hope for justice and equality in the
world we must build tomorrow.

Inquiry revealed that the writer, a sensitive and gifted young man,
had come Binder the influence of the local Muslim minister, as had
a few otl^er students at the college. Despite their Christian back-
grounds, and despite the fact that they were even then attending a
church-related college, these young men had despaired of Chris-
tianity as a way of life capable of affording them the respect and
dignity they sought and deserved.

I did not share those sentiments, and I do not share them
today; but the challenge to study the alternative proposed in the
term paper was irresistible.

This study of the Black Muslims has been an interesting and
fascinating adventure, full of surprises and of social and religious
inconformities. I soon discovered, for example, that these were
no ordinary Moslems, nor did they wish to be taken as such. To
distinguish themselves from the small Moslem enclaves that have
existed in a few American cities for generations, they chose the
spelling "Muslim" rather than the more familiar "Moslem."
Further, these Muslims emphasize that they are "Black Men,"
black as the antithesis of white. They do not subscribe to the

iv Preface

familiar Moslem doctrine that a common submission to Allah
erases and transcends all racial awareness. On the contrary, they
do not conceive the white man as capable of being a Muslim. "By
nature he is incapable!"

The racial emphases peculiar to this rapidly growing, Chi-
cago-centered movement suggested the descriptive phrase "Black
Muslims," which I coined in 1956 and which has been widely
used since to designate this group. Theretofore they had been
variously known as the "Temple People," "the Muhammadans,"
"the Muslims," "the Voodoo Cult" and "the Nation of Islam."1

The study of the Black Muslims has taken me to many cities
across the country, and it has provided unusual opportunities for
me to sense directly the several pulses of America's Negro com-
munity, which is now making a determined struggle for a creative
and meaningful existence. To most Negroes the teachings of the
Black Muslim leader, Elijah Muhammad, are intellectually repug-
nant, but one is uncomfortably conscious of an emotional ambiva-
lence towards the attraction and the power of a doctrine which
promises an "escape into freedom" after so many years and so
many forms of bondage. The rational self rebels against racism
in any form and from any quarter, but the emotional self resists
the contemplation of a reversal of fortune only with great effort.

This study is in no sense complete. At best it presents a
partial perspective of the dark and serious problems of racial
tension — problems which confront responsible men in this country
and throughout the world. We need more studies about the voice-
less people who want to be heard in the councils of the world.
We need more action in terms of the truths that are already
known. We shall have to hurry, I think, if we hope to pass on to
our children a world in which there is reasonable hope for creative
survival.

Many individuals and institutions have lent encouragement
or support to the study during the years it was in progress. It
would be impossible to name them all, but I wish to express my
thanks and appreciation to every person who has in any way
participated in bringing this piece of research to its present stage.
First of all, I would express my thanks to Albert and Jessie
Danielsen of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, whose comfortable

Preface v

home and warm friendship have provided a haven of refuge at
periods when the day to day pressures have demanded respite.

I am particularly indebted to Professor Gordon Allport of
Harvard University and to Professor Harold Isaacs of the Center
for International Relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology for their encouragement and advice at critical periods of
research and writing.

Dr. Kenneth Benne, Director of the Boston University
Human Relations Center, and Mr. Frank Hurwitz, Executive
Secretary of the Center, not only placed the facilities of the Center
at my disposal but also relieved me of the normal responsibilities
incident to being a Human Relations Fellow, thus permitting me
to give full time to research on the Black Muslims. Professor
Robert Chin at the Center has been of invaluable help and encour-
agement in helping to structure the research and in criticizing my
methods of procedure and investigation.

I wish also to express my thanks to Mr. Elijah Muhammad,
the "Spiritual Head of the Muslims in the West," for his coopera-
tion in certain phases of the study. I am especially indebted to
Minister Malcolm X of New York City and to Minister Louis X
of Boston for the unusual degree of cooperation I have received
from them during the course of the investigation. While we have
not always agreed on certain premises incident to the Movement,
these gentlemen have always welcomed me with courtesy, respect
and a spirit of cooperation.

The Pittsburgh Courier made its files available to me, an
important courtesy for which I am very grateful indeed.

To President James P. Brawley and Dean A. A. McPheeters
of Clark College, I would express my appreciation for their con-
tinued encouragement, and for the extended leave of absence
which made it possible for me to complete the research, the dis-
sertation and this manuscript before returning to my post as
Professor of Social Philosophy at Clark.

It would be difficult indeed for me to adequately express my
gratitude to Dean Walter G. Muelder and Associate Professor
Paul Deats, Jr., of the Boston University School of Theology.
Nominally the professors directing my graduate studies, they have
in fact been friends and counselors through three long and crucial

vi Preface

years. I cannot hope to repay them for their guidance and con-
fidence— and for their abiding friendship, which has always been
a dimension external to the professor-student relationship.

I wish to express my indebtedness to Miss Sylvia Lafargue,
Miss Hester W. Price and Mrs. Bertha S. Mintz, whose expert
typing turned my original notes into an acceptable manuscript.

This has been an expensive undertaking, and it could not
have been accomplished without generous support from several
sources. The initial investigation was unsupported; but three
years of study and research at Boston University were supported
by grants and fellowships from the John Hay Whitney Foundation,
The Crusade Scholarships of the Methodist Church, the Lilly
Foundation, the Boston University Human Relations Center and
the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and the
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.

Professor Lyman V. Cady, head of the Department of Re-
ligion and Philosophy during my graduate studies at Fisk Uni-
versity, very graciously interrupted his summer vacation to read
portions of the manuscript and to make suggestions for its im-
provement; so also did Alex Haley, who has himself been an
observer and interpreter of the Movement, and Dr. J. T. Wright,
former director of the Staten Island Mental Health Association.
All three are wise and perceptive friends and critics. Whatever
inadequacies may persist in this study can but reflect my own
inability to employ effectively the prudent judgments available to
me.

Finally, it should be acknowledged that the real sacrifice
making this study possible has been borne by those most dear to
me, who have had to carry on in my absence longer than it was
reasonable to ask. I only hope that in some way this effort has
been worth their patience and deprivation.

C. ERIC LINCOLN
Boston, Massachusetts
December 1960

Contents

Preface iii

Foreword by Gordon Allport ix

1. The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 3

The End of the Second-Class Ride 6 The Stranger in Detroit 10
Economic and Political Power 17 The Believers ... 21
. . . And Why They Become Believers 27

2. The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 33

I. Bitter Soil and Bitter Fruits 34

Group Consciousness 34 Avoidance 35 Acceptance 38
Aggression 39

II. Black Nationalism, U.S.A. 41

Stereotype and Identity 41 Black Nationalism 43 Black
Nationalism and Social Class 46

3. Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues 50

Religious Nationalism: The Moorish Science Temples 51
Political Nationalism: The Garvey Movement 56 Preparing
the Way for Allah 66

4. The Faith and the Future 67

I. Doctrines and Mythology 68

The Plight of the So-Called Negroes 68 The Coming of
Allah 72 The Original Man 75 The White Man and
Christianity 76

II. Muslim Morality 80

III. The Goals of the Movement 84

The United Front of Black Men 84 Racial Separation 87
Economic Separation 90 Some Good Earth 94

5. Reaching for the Masses 98

I. The Nature of a Mass Movement 98

The Importance of Mass Membership 98 The True Be-
liever 99 Leadership in the Mass Movement 101 The
Instruments of Unification 103

vii

viii Contents

II. The Black Muslims as a Mass Movement 106

Reaching for the Masses 106 Lures for the True Be-
liever 108 Recruitment 111 Visit to a Temple 115
Schools and the Center 126 Mr. Muhammad Speaks 129

6. Tensions: Outside the Movement 135

I. The Negro Community 135

Individual Negro Leadership 135 The Negro Press 141
Institutional Negro Leadership 145 The Negro Christian
Churches 155 The Negro Man in the Street 159
II. The Jewish Community 165

III. The American Islamic Community 169

IV. The White Community 172

7. Tensions: Inside the Movement 179

I. The Concentration of Power 180

The Long Road from Sandersville 180 Malcolm X:

First Plenipotentiary 189 Near the Center 192 Trouble

on the Horizon 194
II. The Secret Army 199
III. The Search for Respectability 204

Violence and the Christian Tradition 204 The Race

Issue 208

8. The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 210

A Legitimate Religion? 212 A Moslem Sect? 218 The Politi-
cal Implications 223

9. The Meaning for America 230

I. The Spectrum of Negro Protest 227

A Vestige of Faith 227 Group Identification: The Cor-
porate Response 229
II. Separatist Organizations 234

III. Integrative Organizations 238

IV. The Black Muslim Movement 246

The Edge of the Spectrum 246 Function and Dysfunc-
tion 248

V. The Deeper Cause 253

Notes 257

Index 270

Foreword

One century after the Emancipation Proclamation we are
still trying in our country to repair the moral ravages of slavery.
Our progress is slow and sluggish. It is this sluggishness that has
given rise to the melodramatic Black Muslim Movement.

Dr. C. Eric Lincoln gives us a clear, moving, balanced
account of the origins and rationale of this movement. His book
makes fascinating reading. It is also one of the best technical case
studies in the whole literature of social science. From it we learn
that while the tenets of this strange Moslem sect are fantastic and
unbelievable, yet at the same time the movement as a whole makes
good sense and has functional value for its numerous adherents.
Oppression evolves a logic of its own. An ideology, though wierd,
often means more than it says.

The Black Muslim believes that the day of the white man
has passed — or soon will. Peaceful integration is not the Negro's
goal, for "why integrate with a dying man?" What the Negro
requires is a new morale, economic self-sufficiency, a high code of
personal morals, and a return to the pristine glory of his race. He
needs to free himself from all remnants of slave mentality and
from Christianity which has too long kept him doped in subservi-
ence to the white man. These are the underlying propositions
upon which the movement rests. It has a Nietzschean flavor. But
since abstractions require concrete symbolization in order to moti-
vate, Elijah Muhammad, the leader, has evolved a heady array of
myths, rituals, styles of greeting, to provide the effective scaffold-
ing of imagery needed by his less educated followers. The tie to
Islam is, of course, an historical monstrosity, but this fact does
not trouble minds innocent of theological antiquity.

The entire movement rests upon an absolute and inflexible
dichotomy of white-Negro, or, more accurately, white-non-
white. White is evil; non-white is good. Here are a few key
phrases: "There is no white man a Muslim can trust." If you say

x Foreword

the movement rests on hate, it is "the hate that hate produced."
Even the impartial reader concludes that much Elijah Muhammad
says about the white man is "true enough to be embarrassing."

Thus the reader himself easily slips into a spurious black-
white frame of mind. Like the Black Muslim he may find himself
exalting race, "man's most dangerous myth," to the position of a
final fixed truth.

Biologically speaking, color is a trivial fact. It leads none
the less to coarse and dangerous misclassifications when it is
applied to relationships within the human family. Some white men
say that non-whites (all of them) are inferior. They are, of
course, wrong. The only true statement would be, that in some
respects some of them are inferior, many are not. Similarly, the
Black Muslim says "the white man" is responsible for all the
disprivilege suffered by the non-white. The truth is that some
white men under some conditions are responsible for some of the
disadvantages of colored people. Overgeneralization is the very
essence of prejudice. Hence such dogmas as these follow the line
of bigotry rather than logic.

Most of us believe that improvement in group relations will
come about when — by education and exhortation, by law and
law-enforcement — fewer and fewer whites are led to behave in
ways injurious to non-whites. But the Black Muslim does not
agree. For him the case is closed: it is non-white versus white. All
people are fatally typed by skin color forever. Human beings are
not mixtures of good and bad, wise and stupid, friendly and un-
friendly, just and unjust, trustworthy and untrustworthy. Rather
they are white and non-white, the one group, by its essence,
incarnates evil qualities, the other virtues. This erroneous slicing
marks the thought of all racists — of Hitler, of the White Citizens
Council, of the Black Muslims.

Why do I feel it necessary here to refute the haunting irrele-
vancy of race? I confess it is because in reading these pages I
found myself at times carried away by the persuasiveness of
Elijah Muhammad and his ministers. I succumbed to Dr. Lin-
coln's deeply understanding and sympathetic account. Even
though he writes as a social scientist his penetration of the topic
forces me to wrestle with both the pros and cons of the case.

Foreword xi

The author properly notes the ambiguity with which the
leaders shroud the ultimate objectives of the movement. Its impli-
cations for the future are in a sense frightening, even though for
the present one must admit there are gains for its devotees in
heightened morality, economic improvement, and in hopeful out-
look.

Further developments will bear close watching — by govern-
ment authorities and also by social scientists. Will the sect con-
tinue to spread or will it wane? Will the fantastic legends on
which it is based lose their appeal as the educational level of
Negroes rises? Or, to the contrary, will educated Negroes find it
possible to subscribe to an absurd ideology as did many German
intellectuals under Hitler? And what other changes will occur
over time? It is not enough to dismiss the movement as a lurid
anomaly. It has deep roots in protest and is puzzling in portent.

Many of us live with false but cozy illusions concerning our
relationships with other racial, ethnic, and national groups. We
are not aware that a present battle rages between enlightened and
fanatic solutions of our family problems. The situation in the
United States, in South Africa, in Asia shows this to be the case.
By deepening our insight Dr. Lincoln strengthens the hand of
enlightenment. For only if we face the realities of race relations
with accurate knowledge can we hope to find a sensible issue out
of our predicament. We do well, therefore, to ponder closely the
case of the Black Muslims.

GORDON W. ALLPORT

The Black Muslims in America

To

Cecil Eric

and
Joyce Elaine

1 The Verdict is "Guilty"—
The Sentence is Death

A slightly-built, light-skinned Negro paused casually before
twelve grave-faced Negro men and women sitting in a jury box at
Boston's John Hancock Hall. There was an air of gentle friendli-
ness about him, and he hardly looked the part of a prosecuting
attorney. Slowly he turned and looked at a red-faced, tow-haired
white man slumped disconsolately in the dock and flanked by two
grim and alert Negro policemen. The prosecutor's eyes hardened.
His jaw stiffened, and the veins stood out clearly about his temples.
His right arm shot out like a rapier and froze — the index finger
pointing at the figure in the dock like a javelin momentarily sus-
pended in flight. The white man cringed in his chair and was
hauled erect by the officers. Some two thousand Negroes in the
audience sat petrified with the novelty and daring of it as the young
Bostonian delivered his indictment against the white man on behalf
of the Black Nation of Islam:

I charge the white man with being the greatest liar on earth! I charge
the white man with being the greatest drunkard on earth. ... I
charge the white man with being the greatest gambler on earth. I
charge the white man, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, with being
the greatest peace-breaker on earth. I charge the white man with being
the greatest adulterer on earth. I charge the white man with being
the greatest robber on earth. I charge the white man with being the
greatest deceiver on earth. I charge the white man with being the
greatest trouble-maker on earth. So, therefore, ladies and gentlemen
of the jury, I ask you, bring back a verdict of guilty as charged!1

The foreman polled the jury in the box. Within seconds he
rose to read the verdict:

"We find the defendant guilty — as charged."
The sentence pronounced was "death," and the frightened
defendant was dragged away, loudly protesting his innocence and
enumerating all he had "done for the Nigra people."

4 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

The audience thundered its approval of the play. Its repeated
ovations required several curtain calls by the players.

What was behind it all? Who were these people clamoring
for the death of the white man? They were, for the most part,
Black Muslims — followers of Elijah Muhammad, "Spiritual Head
of the Muslims in the West." The drama they had just witnessed
was written and produced by members of the Movement,2 and it
has been staged in many of the major cities across America.3

The Black Muslims are probably America's fastest growing
racist sect — 100,000 militant "Black Men" who look forward to
the day when the white man in America will be "treated as he
ought to be treated." The Movement is growing rapidly, and it is
nationwide; in December 1960, there were sixty-nine temples or
missions in twenty-seven states, from California to Massachusetts
and Florida. Under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad, who has
been hailed by thousands inside and outside the Movement as
"the most fearless Black Man in America," the Black Muslims
are demanding — and getting — a hearing from a significant element
of the Negro community. Their ultimate demand — that Black
Men be allowed to set up a separate state within the United States,
occupying as much as one-fifth of the nation's territory — com-
mands little or no attention among non-Muslim Negroes. But the
lashing indictment of the white man that supports the demand,
strikes a responsive, if reluctant, chord in many Negro hearts.

The Black Muslims are neither pacifists nor aggressors. They
pay zealous attention to the requirements of the letter of law
regarding peace and order. They engage in no "sit-ins," test no
segregation statutes, participate in no "marches on Washington"
or anywhere else. But they do believe in keeping the scores even,
and they have warned all America that "an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth" is the only effective way to settle racial differ-
ences. Minister Malcolm X of the New York temple explained
in a Boston address:

We are never aggressors. We will not attack anyone. We strive for
peaceful relationships with everyone. BUT — [we teach our people
that] if anyone attacks you, lay down your life! Every Muslim is
taught never to [initiate a] fight. Respect another man's rights whether

The Verdict is "Guilty"— The Sentence is Death 5

he is white, black, brown, yellow or what-not! Respect him as a man.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!" Never be
the aggressor, never look for trouble. But if any man molests you*
may Allah bless you!*

Although tense situations involving the Muslims and the civil
authorities have occasionally developed, little violence has been
associated with the Movement in recent times. Nevertheless, the
Muslim image is such that an eventual eruption of violence is not
unanticipated. Police in many communities maintain constant
alerts. In Los Angeles, for example, the news media which co-
operate with the local police avoid publicizing the Movement, yet
the Los Angeles police openly worry about "what it's going to
take to light the fuse."5 The leaders of the sect are under constant
surveillance by the FBI, and most of their important meetings are
probably monitored by informers.

Despite these precautions, the expectation of an eventual
racial clash is widespread among observers who know the Move-
ment firsthand, whether as officers charged with the maintenance
of public order or as Negro youth who visit the Muslim temples for
a vicarious swing at "white oppression." The belief that the Mus-
lims plan some kind of overt attack against the Black Man's
oppressors, or that they will retaliate in kind if attacked by the
white man, is widely held by the youth of the "Black Ghetto" —
that is, the slum sections of the large cities, where most Negroes
are compelled to live. The perspective of a New York youth is
typical, if somewhat picturesque:

Man, I don't care what those [Muslim] cats say out loud — that's just
a hype they're putting down for The Man [i.e., the white man]. Let
me tell you — they've got some stuff for The Man even the Mau Mau
didn't have! If he tries to crowd them like he's been used to doing the
rest of us all the time, they're going to lay it on him from here to
Little Rock! I grew up with some of the cats in that temple — went
to school with them; ran around with them. Man, those cats have
changed. They ain't for no light playing. Those cats are for real, and
you'd better believe it!6

How did it all begin? What is the meaning of the Black Mus-
lim Movement? What kind of people belong to it, and just what
are its aims? All observers agree that its membership is increasing,

6 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

yet most Negro leaders insist that the Muslim membership "should
reach its peak shortly."7 Meanwhile, the Muslims continue to
found new temples, and Elijah Muhammad continues to draw
thousands to his rallies. Why do they come? What are they
after?

To answer these questions, we shall have to look at the socio-
logical drama of contemporary America, especially at the Ameri-
can Negro's increasing dissatisfaction with the "bit" role he has
been permitted to play. As one Muslim minister put it: "We've
just had a 'walk-on' part. We've been nothing but background
scenery for everybody else. Now we've got something to say, and
we're going to say it loud enough for the whole world to hear."

The End of the Second-Class Ride

How different [was the tolerant spirit of the medieval Western Chris-
tian] from the spirit in which the white-skinned Western Protestant
of modern times regards his black-skinned convert. The convert may
have found spiritual salvation in the White Man's faith; he may have
acquired the White Man's culture and learnt to speak his language
with the tongue of an angel; he may have become an adept in the
White Man's economic technique, and yet it profits him nothing so
long as he has not changed his skin.8

Thus observes Professor Arnold Toynbee: in Western Protestant
societies, at least, the first credential for acceptance is a white
skin. A man who happens to be born with a different skin color
cannot hope to be accepted, whatever his spiritual or intellectual
merit.

This observation, from the perspective of world history, is on
solid sociological ground. In his famous "Yankee City" studies,
W. Lloyd Warner writes:

The ethnic group carries a divergent set of cultural traits which are
evaluated by the host as inferior. . . . The racial groups are divergent
biologically rather than culturally. . . . Such physical attributes as
dark skin, the epicanthic fold, or kinky hair become symbols of status
and automatically consign their possessors to inferior status. . . . The
cultural traits of the ethnic group, which have become symbols of
inferior status, can be and are changed in time; but the physical traits
which have become symbols of inferior status are permanent.9

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 7

The data of sociology derive, of course, from observable
human relationships. Every intelligent Negro experiences a feeling
of quarantine when he ponders his future and the avenues of crea-
tive existence open to him. Malcolm X, the "angriest Muslim,"
protests loudly and at length: "When you say 'Negro,' you're
trapped right there. Makes no difference who you are nor how
many degrees you have from Harvard; if you're a Negro, you're
trapped. If you're black, the doors close." And the Muslims are
not unique in these sentiments. No less distinguished a person than
Dr. Anna Hedgman, former administrative aide to the Federal
Security Administration and an administrative assistant to New
York's Mayor Wagner, complained bitterly to a television audi-
ence: "I don't know why white people are so absolutely wound
up on this business, but [you] have to be white. If you could
manage it, you ought to be white with blue eyes and blond hair."
America, she charged, "has so bottled up the Negro" as to render
him completely frustrated and defiant.10

The "school case" decision which the United States Supreme
Court handed down in May 1954 was instrumental in focusing
extraordinary attention upon this major racial dichotomy in the
American society. It is unlikely that any single event since the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 has produced so disturbing
an effect, or has been so portentous of the possibility of extensive
social change.11 People throughout the world acclaimed the new
promise of broadened opportunity for the expression of human
creativity implicit in the decision and were encouraged by it.12
Yet, in practice, the shift from "segregation" to "integration" has
not been spectacular, even in education.

There have been other scattered but hopeful indices of
change in Negro-white relations since 1954. Much encouragement
for change has come from the courts. Segregated seating in inter-
state transportation no longer has legal sanction, and in a few areas
Negro citizens now enjoy the unrestricted use of parks, beaches
and other public recreational facilities. These and similar legal
advances have given impetus and encouragement to improvements
in some private institutions which, by their nature, cannot be the
subject of litigation aimed at desegregation. This has been par-
ticularly true of some churches and church-related schools, which

8 The Verdict is "Guilty"— The Sentence is Death

have admitted Negroes although under no legal compulsion to
do so.

In the economic sphere, the picture is less bright. Race re-
mains a determining criterion for employment throughout the
South and generally elsewhere in the country, and job restriction is
a formidable barrier to the Negro citizen's fulfillment of his crea-
tive potential. In spite of federal executive orders and state and
municipal legislation,13 discrimination in employment remains the
rule rather than the exception.14

In political affairs, Negro-white relations have not perceptibly
improved. On the contrary, in many parts of the South there has
been a general strengthening of traditional methods to restrict
Negro voting or to exclude it altogether. In Fayette County in
west Tennessee, for example, Negroes were "starved out" for
wanting to vote. For months it was impossible for Negro citizens
to buy oil or gasoline for their tractors and other machinery. Bank
credit for crop loans — indispensable in this rural county — had
been stopped. No Negro could buy food or household necessities
in the local white stores, and wholesale houses refused to supply
Negro businesses.15 Why? Because 450 Negroes insisted on
registering to vote, as did 3,000 white citizens. Negroes constitute
a majority in the county, but they have never been permitted even
a single voice in its government.

It is against this backdrop that one must come to grips with
the Black Muslim Movement. The lynchings, the danger of being
killed while under arrest,16 the unevenness and uncertainty of
justice in the courts, the continuing problem of simply finding a
decent place to live — all are contributory to the making of a
Muslim and to the propagation of a mass movement of protest.

Perhaps the nearest parallel to the Black Muslim Movement
was the Garvey movement of the post- World War I era. The
social conditions which made Garveyism possible were similar to
those obtaining at the present time, if not quite the same. We
have had "Little Rock" and "Clinton, Tennessee," though there
has been no wholesale murder of Negroes such as occurred during
the infamous "Red Summer" of 1919. There have been improve-
ments in the Negro's total status since Garvey's day — a little here,
a l;ttle there. There have been some breaches in the high, white

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 9

wall of segregation. But for Negroes in general, and for the Black
Muslims in particular, these isolated improvements in the Negro's
total status are not enough. The tradition of disprivilege and the
continuing formidable opposition to first-class citizenship are the
discouraging elements that contribute most to the "Muslim mood."

Yet we cannot dismiss the Black Muslim Movement as sim-
ply another reaction against the traditional expressions of Ameri-
can race-consciousness. The history of the Negro in America is
per se a history of race-consciousness and its consequences,17 but
American history has not heretofore produced an archetype of the
Black Muslim Movement.

The new and most challenging factor, of course, is the expan-
sion of the American Negro's horizon from the national to the
international scene. World War II saw the practical end of Euro-
pean colonialism, and the rapid demise of colonialistic philosophy
has been a significant feature of postwar international relations.
The determination to be free is the characteristic mood of the
hundreds of millions of people whose destinies have not for cen-
turies been self-determined; and for the most part, the colonial
powers have seen and heeded the signs of the times. In an address
before the United Nations, as the world community welcomed the
newly independent Cameroons into membership, French delegate
Armand Berard called pointed attention to the fact that "inde-
pendence need not come as the result of conquest and violence."18
Seventeen African states achieved more or less peaceful inde-
pendence in 1960. "Everywhere the Dark Continent is emerging
into the news spotlight. It is demanding attention — and getting it.
Some observers are calling 1960 'Africa Year.' "19

The emergence of Africa is a vitally significant factor in the
aggressive impatience of the American Negro. Most of the colo-
nial peoples of the past three centuries have been non-white and
under white domination, and American Negroes have understand-
ably felt some identification with them. The independence of
India, Indonesia, the Philippines and other non-white Asian na-
tions stirred applause, though little hope, in the breasts of Ameri-
ca's largest minority. With Africa, the parallel strikes painfully
close. Many Negroes for whom Africa seemed as remote as the
planet Jupiter now find themselves exhilarated and encouraged by

10 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

the emergence of black national states in the once "dark" conti-
nent. But they also find themselves strangely threatened, for the
African may leave his American brother behind as the only re-
maining symbol of racial inferiority, of the socially and politically
dedasst "Black Man," left in the world.

There is a feeling among American Negroes that the non-
white world is waiting — waiting to see if they are fit to be counted
as men. There is a new determination in the Negro community to
"go first class, whatever the cost." For most, "first class" means
an unqualified enjoyment of all the rights and duties of citizenship.
For others, "first class" means political and social autonomy — a
national state for the "Black Man" in America.

The Stranger in Detroit

Sometime in the midsummer of 1930, an amiable but faintly
mysterious peddler suddenly appeared in the Negro community of
Detroit. He was thought to be an Arab,20 although his racial and
national identity still remains undocumented. He was welcomed
into the homes of the culture-hungry Negroes, who were eager to
purchase his silks and artifacts, which he claimed were like those
the Negro people wore in their homeland across the sea.

He came first to our houses selling raincoats, and then afterwards,
silks. In this way he could get into the people's houses, for every
woman was eager to see the nice things the peddlers had for sale. He
told us that the silks he carried were the same kind that our people
used in their home country, and that he was from there. So we asked
him to tell us about our own country.21

His customers were so anxious to learn of their own past and the
country from which they came that the peddler soon began hold-
ing meetings from house to house throughout the community.

At first, the "prophet," as he came to be known, confined his
teachings to a recitation of his experiences in foreign lands, admo-
nitions against certain foods and suggestions for improving his
listeners' physical health. He was kind, friendly, unassuming and
patient.

... he would eat whatever we had on the table, but after the meal he
began to talk. "Now don't eat this food, it is poison for you. The

The Verdict is "Guilty"— The Sentence is Death 11

people in your own country do not eat it. Since they eat the right
kind of food they have the best health all the time. If you would just
live like the people in your home country, you would never be sick
any more." So we all wanted him to tell us about ourselves and about
our home country and about how we could be free from rheuma-
tism, aches, and pains.22

He also used the Bible as a textbook to teach them about their
true religion — not Christianity, but the religion of the Black Men
of Asia and Africa. He used the Bible because it was the only
religious book his followers knew. It was not the proper book for
the Black Nation; but, carefully interpreted, it could be made to
serve until they were introduced to the Holy Qur'an (or Quran).
Eventually the stranger's teachings took the form of increas-
ingly bitter denouncements against the white race; and as his
prestige grew, he "began to attack the teachings of the Bible in
such a way as to shock his hearers and bring them to an emotional
crisis."23 People experienced sudden conversions and became his
followers.

Up to that day I always went to the Baptist church. After I heard
the sermon from the prophet, I was turned around completely. When
I went home and heard that dinner was ready, I said: "I don't want to
eat dinner. I just want to go back to the meeting." I wouldn't eat
any meals but I [went] back that night, and I went to every meeting
after that.24

Before long, the house-to-house meetings were inadequate to
accommodate all those who wished to hear the prophet. The
solution was obvious: they hired a hall, which they named the
Temple of Islam. Thus the movement which has become known
as the Black Muslims was born.

No one knew very much about the founder of this first tem-
ple. Usually he referred to himself as Mr. Farrad Mohammad or
Mr. F. Mohammad AIL He was also known as Professor Ford,
Mr. Wali Farrad and W. D. Fard. One of his earliest converts
recalls that, on one occasion, the prophet said:

My name is W. D. Fard, and I come from the Holy City of Mecca.
More about myself I will not tell you yet, for the time has not yet
come. I am your brother. You have not yet seen me in my royal
robes.25

12 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

Inevitably, there was a proliferation of legends about so mys-
terious a figure. One such legend is that Fard was a Jamaican
Negro whose father was a Syrian Moslem. Another describes him
as a Palestinian Arab who had participated in various racial agita-
tions in India, South Africa and London before moving on to
Detroit. Some of his followers believed him to be the son of
wealthy parents of the tribe of Koreish — the tribe of Mohammed,
founder of classical Islam.26 Others say that he was educated at a
London university in preparation for a diplomatic career in the
service of the kingdom of Hejaz, but that he sacrificed his personal
future "to bring 'freedom, justice, and equality' to the 'black men
in the wilderness of North America, surrounded and robbed com-
pletely by the Cave Man.'"27 Fard announced himself to the
Detroit police as "the Supreme Ruler of the Universe," and at
least some of his followers seem to have considered him divine.
At the other extreme, a Chicago newspaper investigating the Black
Muslim Movement refers to Fard as "a Turkish-born Nazi agent
[who] worked for Hitler in World War II."28

Fard described himself to his followers as having been sent to
wake his "uncle" — that is, the Black Nation — to the full range of
the Black Man's possibilities in a world temporarily dominated by
the "blue-eyed devils." The illiterate Negroes who heard his heady
talk were awed by his apparent fearlessness (as were to be the
hundred thousand others and more who pledged themselves to
follow his successor a generation later). They became increasingly
alert to the subtle discriminations they faced in the North. For
the North was no Promised Land: it was the South all over again,
with the worst features of racial prejudice thinly camouflaged by
"sweet talk about equality."

The fact that the country was in the throes of the great De-
pression did not help the situation. The starving, overcrowded
Negroes living in the slums of Detroit (as in other Northern
cities) became increasingly bitter toward the whites who seemed
to control their lives. Policemen, who are the ever-present re-
minder of the white man's power; white workers, who displaced
the Negroes as jobs became more scarce or who retained their
jobs as thousands of Negroes were being laid off; even the welfare
workers, who insulted the Negroes and made them wait long

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 13

hours before passing out the pitiful supplies of flour and lard —
all these became the symbolic targets of a virulent hatred of the
white man growing in the breasts of Fard's Black Nation. One
extreme example:

An Asiatic trend among Negro dole recipients of the Elmwood dis-
trict, noted at the time as a passing whim . . . came back with horror
to two women welfare workers on learning that the fanatical [Black
Muslim] Robert Harris had intended them for human sacrifice as
infidels. . . . Harris stated to the police that each of these was a "no-
good Christian," and that they would have been sacrificed if he knew
where he could have found them.29

At first the contact between the Negroes and Fard was casual
and informal. After a temple had been secured, however, the
house-to-house meetings were discontinued, and a tightly knit
organization replaced the informal gatherings. Members were
examined before acceptance and were then registered, and a
hierarchy was established. At this point, some of the followers
of the late Noble Drew AH began to pledge themselves to Fard.

Fard continued to teach his followers about the deceptive
character of the white man and to help them relive, at least in
fantasy, the glorious history of Black Afro-Asia. An unusually
resourceful teacher, he was able to utilize such varied literature
as the writings of Joseph F. "Judge" Rutherford, then leader of
the Jehovah's Witnesses, Van Loon's Story of Mankind, Breasted's
The Conquest of Civilization, the Quran, the Bible and certain of
the literature of Freemasonry to bring his people to "a knowledge
of self." Some of the illiterate were taught to read so that they
could learn firsthand about the past greatness of their race. All
were encouraged to purchase radios so that they could hear the
addresses of Rutherford and of Frank Norris, the Baptist funda-
mentalist.

The white man's words were not to be taken literally, for he
was considered incapable of telling the truth. His writings were
symbolic and needed interpretation, and this was Fard's mission
to his "uncle" in the West. So, having taught his followers to
read, he then interpreted for them what they read — interpreted it
in the name of the one true God, "whose right and proper name
is Allah." Thus, he explained, the white man served as a tool in

14 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

the hands of Allah through which the Black Man could learn the
secrets of his own past and prepare himself for the role history
would demand of him.

To supplement the "symbolic" literature of the white man,
Fard himself wrote two manuals for the Movement. The Secret
Ritual of the Nation of Islam was (and still is) transmitted orally;
it is memorized verbatim by the students at the Movement's paro-
chial schools and has become an oral tradition. Teaching for the
Lost Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way, though it was
printed and given to registered Muslims, was written in Fard's
own "symbolic language" and required his interpretation.

Within three years, Fard had developed an organization so
effective that he was able to withdraw almost entirely from active
leadership. He had not only set up the temple and established its
ritual and worship but also founded a University of Islam (actu-
ally, a combined elementary and secondary school), dedicated to
"higher mathematics," astronomy and the "ending of the spook
civilization." He had created the Muslim Girls Training Class,
which taught young Muslim women the principles of home eco-
nomics and how to be a proper wife and mother. Finally, "fear
of trouble with unbelievers, especially with the police, led to the
founding of the Fruit of Islam — a military organization for the
men who were drilled by captains and taught tactics and the use
of firearms."30 A Minister of Islam was now appointed to run
the entire organization, aided by a staff of assistant ministers.
Each of these men was selected and trained personally by Fard,
who gradually stopped his public appearances and eventually
disappeared from view.

One of the earliest officers in the Movement under Fard was
Elijah Muhammad, who was born Elijah Poole. Poole and his
family migrated from Georgia in the 1920s; and after Fard's ap-
pearance, several of them were soon identified with the Nation of
Islam. An interesting mishap occurred at the time of Poole's
initiation into the Movement. Under Fard, each proselyte was
required to write a letter asking for his "original" (Islamic) name;
when he received this name, the "slave name" given his ancestors
by the white man was discarded. When the three Poole brothers
applied for names, they neglected to mention that they were blood

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 15

brothers, and "despite his omniscience, the prophet gave [them]
the surnames of Sharrieff, Karriem and Muhammad." When the
mistake became apparent, Fard explained that he had "divine
knowledge of the different paternity of the three brothers."31

Elijah Muhammad devoted himself wholeheartedly to Fard
and to the Movement. Though opposed by moderates in the
hierarchy, he became Fard's most trusted lieutenant. At his initia-
tion he had been given the "original" surname Karriem, but Fard
now acknowledged his higher status by renaming him Elijah
Muhammad. When a chief Minister of Islam was named to pre-
side over the organization, Fard chose Muhammad, and the choice
proved a wise one. Elijah Muhammad was almost singlehandedly
responsible for the deification of Fard and for the perpetuation of
his teachings in the early years after Fard disappeared.

The Prophet's disappearance occurred in about June 1934,
shortly after Muhammad was named Minister of Islam, and he
vanished as mysteriously as he had arrived. Even the police seem
to have been baffled. A report that he was last seen "aboard a
ship bound for Europe" is unsubstantiated; so also are reports
that he met with foul play at the hands of either the Detroit police
or some of his dissident followers. It is certain that many of those
who heard Fard were openly hostile to his anti-white diatribes
and resented his attacks on the Christian church.32 But any link
between these antipathies and his strange disappearance remains
in the realm of undocumented conjecture.

Some of Muhammad's critics hint darkly at the coincidence
of Fard's disappearance at the moment of Muhammad's rise to
power. But Muhammad's rise was neither sudden nor unchal-
lenged, and Fard himself had had to struggle to retain leadership
after the Movement began to grow. Muhammad simply cast his
lot on the side that eventually prevailed.

The very nature of the Prophet's teachings made schism and
factionalism inevitable. Quite early in the life of the Movement,
Abdul Muhammad, another of Fard's trusted officers, withdrew
and organized a competing temple. Fard had consistently taught
that his followers were not Americans and that they owed no
allegiance to the American flag. It was stupid, he argued, to
pledge allegiance to a flag that offered no protection against "the

16 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

depravities of the white devils [who] by their tricknology . . .
keep our peoples illiterate to use as tools and slaves." Abdul
Muhammad's splinter group, in contrast, was founded on the
principle of complete loyalty to the American Constitution and to
the nation's flag. This splinter group, however, did not survive.

As early as 1932 the Communist party attempted to infiltrate
the Black Muslim organization and take it over. It was followed
by the Japanese, who sought to establish a fifth-column beachhead
in the group under the direction of the wily Major Takahashi. The
major tried to persuade the Muslims to swear allegiance to the
Mikado, and he succeeded in splitting off some members of the
Movement.33 Nor were these the only international interests seek-
ing to cultivate the Muslims. By 1934 even the Ethiopians devel-
oped a sudden interest in "the Black Nation in the West"; one
Wyxzewixard S. J. Challouehliczilczese sought to use the Move-
ment to promote various financial schemes in the interest of his
native land. Closer to home, America's "union-busting" interests
did not hesitate to take advantage of the hunger and poverty of
the unsophisticated Negroes in a war against the CIO. All these
efforts failed, but the struggle against them drained much of the
vitality of the Movement.

After Fard's disappearance, the Muslims soon lost their
aggressiveness; and the Movement, to which Fard had drawn
eight thousand adherents, began to decline in size and in power.
Quarrels broke to the surface, and the relatively lethargic mod-
erates drove Elijah Muhammad from Detroit to the Temple No. 2
in Chicago, which had been established as the Southside Mosque
two years earlier. There he set up new headquarters and began
to reshape the Movement under his own highly militant leader-
ship. Fard became identified with the god Allah; having been thus
deified, he was worshipped with prayer and sacrifice. Muhammad,
who had served "Allah," naturally assumed the mantle of
"Prophet," which "Allah" had worn during his mission in Detroit.
Today Muhammad is referred to both as the Prophet and, more
often, as the Messenger of Allah.

The Black Muslims have come far under Muhammad. He
has given them temples and schools, apartment houses and grocery
stores, restaurants and farms. Most important of all, he has given

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 17

them a new sense of dignity, a conviction that they are more than
the equals of the white man and are destined to rule the earth.
"The Messenger," the faithful say reverently, "has taught us
knowledge of ourselves; and this is the knowledge that makes it
possible for us to obtain freedom, justice and equality in the world,
no matter what the white man thinks, no matter what the white
man does." This is not a passive belief: Muhammad has promised
to "do something for my beautiful Black Nation," and the Muslims
are certain that he will. "That's right! That's right!" they say
fervently, and swear to lay down their lives if it should be his will.

Economic and Political Power

The Black Muslims are an intensely dedicated, tightly disci-
plined block of more than 100,000 American Negroes, convinced
that they have learned the ultimate truth and ready to make any
sacrifice it may demand of them. Theirs is not a "Sunday reli-
gion": the Muslim temples hold frequent meetings, and every
Muslim is required to attend two (and often more) meetings a
week. Nor is it a religion that spares the billfold. The mass of
Muslims are from the Negro lower class, with relatively low in-
comes, and they are encouraged to live respectably and provide
for their families. But the men are urged to hold steady jobs;
and all Muslims are forbidden to gamble, smoke, drink liquor,
overeat, indulge in fripperies or buy on credit. As a result most
Muslims enjoy a healthy standard of living and still have enough
cash left over to swell the Movement's coffers.

Every Muslim is expected to give a fixed percentage of his
income to the Movement each year. In 1952 this percentage was
set at one-third of all earnings; but the figure is probably not
always so high. In addition, the temples collect contributions for
a variety of funds, many for local purposes and at least six for
the use of the national headquarters at Temple No. 2 in Chicago.
Of the six known national funds, four are earmarked for real
estate, public relations, official travel and new cars; one is an
annual collection on the anniversary of Fard's birthday, February
26th, with no purpose designated; and one is a discretionary fund,

18 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

the "No. 2 Treasury and Central Point Fund," for Muhammad to
use as he sees fit. The increase in the total funds available to the
Movement is suggested by the increase in its real estate holdings
in Chicago in the last six years — from an estimated $150,000 in
1954 to an estimated $500,000 at the end of 1960.

But the Muslims' power to influence the general American
community is significant, not only because of their increasing
membership and financial resources, but also because they can be
mobilized to act in unswerving unison on any matter designated
by the leadership. They will, for example, vote as Muhammad
tells them to vote and buy where he tells them to buy. A Muslim
bloc, therefore, even in a large city, may be the determining factor
in the balance of political and economic power.

It is already said in Harlem that Malcolm X, minister of the
large Temple 7 and Muhammad's chief lieutenant, is in a position
to decide the election of U. S. Representative Adam Clayton
Powell's successor, when and if Powell decides to retire. Whether
or not this is true, the deference shown Malcolm X by numerous
political figures in New York City is impressive. Even more im-
pressive— and far more sinister — as evidence of the Muslims'
political weight is the fact that Fidel Castro, during his dramatic
sojourn in Harlem in the autumn of 1960, invited Malcolm X to a
secret conference which lasted some two hours. Malcolm had
earlier been invited, along with other important American Negroes,
to visit Castro in Cuba. That the invitation was not accepted — or
that acceptance was delayed — can be attributed in part to Muham-
mad's distaste for communism as a white ideology and in part to
his doubt whether Castro is a Black Man (as he seems intent upon
proving) or a "blue-eyed devil" hiding behind a slogan and a
sword.

Muhammad has not yet seen fit to use the undeniable power
of the Black Muslim vote as a lever to prise concessions from the
white or the non-Muslim Negro community. From the start,
Muslims have generally preferred not to vote at all. This has been
due partly to their self-identification with Afro- Asia, partly to their
belief that America is already corrupt and doomed, and partly to
their sense of futility in electing any white man to office. Malcolm
X notes that "Roosevelt promised, Truman promised, Eisenhower

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 19

promised. Negroes are still knocking on the door begging for civil
rights. ... Do you mean to tell me that in a powerful country like
this, a so-called Christian country, that a handful of men from the
South can prevent the North, the West, the Central States and
the East from giving Negroes the rights the Constitution says they
already have? No! I don't believe that and neither do you. No
white man really wants the Black Man to have his rights, or he'd
have them. The United States does everything else it wants to
do."34

The Muslims have also refrained from voting in an effort to
keep their strength a secret. "If you don't vote, nobody knows
what you can accomplish when you do," and so far there has been
no issue worth a real display of strength. In an address following
the 1960 political conventions, Muhammad admonished some
seven thousand Negroes at a New York meeting simply to "go to
the polls with your eyes and ears open, and remember that it is
not necessary for you to go seeking justice for anyone but your-
selves. . . . The white people of America already have their free-
dom, justice and equal rights."35

The time may come, however, when more than an undefined
"justice" will be at stake. The Muslim leadership may one day
feel ready to issue specific demands on local, state and national
political bodies. Then, even at the national level, they can expect
to be heard with respect. Recent elections seem to have demon-
strated that a party, to win, must control the large industrial cities
of the North, in which the Negro vote is potentially pivotal. But
Negroes do not vote as a bloc; they split their votes between the
two major parties. Anyone who could amass and "deliver" a
significant number of Negro votes in these cities, therefore, would
lead from strength in dealing with the national party organizations.
It is precisely in these cities that the Black Muslim Movement is
now flourishing. And, "You can be sure of one thing," says Mal-
colm X. "Every single Muslim man and woman will vote the way
Mr. Muhammad tells him to vote."

The Black Muslims' political power is ominous but, for the
moment, latent. It is reckoned with seriously at the local and state
level in many states, but Muhammad is not seeking political align-
ments even there, and he is unlikely to attempt a national power-

20 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

play for some years to come. The Muslims' economic power, on
the other hand, is already being brought to bear against the white
community. There is as yet no organized boycott of white mer-
chants, but every Muslim is expected to "buy black" — that is, to
trade with his own kind in preference to "spending your money
where you can't work and can't sit down." Muslims have only
contempt for the Negro sit-in movement, in which Black Men are
"going out of their way to force the white man to let them spend
more money with him," rather than contribute to the establish-
ment of businesses run by and for Black Men.

The Muslims demand an entirely separate black economy,
arguing that not until the Negro is economically independent will
he be, in any real sense, free. The total annual income of the
American Negro, they point out, is more than $20 billion — greater
than the total income of Canada and greater than that of several
European states. Such a purchasing power, if spent among Negro
businessmen and invested in Negro enterprises, would earn the
respect of every nation in the world. The Muslims concede that
the white man has, for the moment, an edge on technical and
commercial know-how. The Black Man must learn whatever the
white man can teach him and then outstrip the white man in
productivity and trade.

As the Negro community develops its own business and
industrial plant, the Muslims' pressure for economic separation is
virtually certain to increase. In the not too distant future, this
may well take the form of an official boycott against white mer-
chants in the Negro ghettos. In a related move, the Muslims
might picket the downtown stores so as to discourage Negroes
from entering and shopping there. Such a maneuver would be so
explosive that white store-owners and policemen might yearn for
the good old days of the tension that accompanied the student
sit-ins. Store-owners cannot be expected to take calmly the prob-
able loss of much of their patronage; but the Muslims are neither
"passive" nor "loving" toward white men, and any violence on
the part of whites would certainly be met with violence. "If it ever
happens," said one police official darkly, "that's when we're going
to have hell on our hands."

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 21

The Believers . . .

Who are these "faithful," these true believers, these Black
Muslims?

Most simply, a Black Muslim is an American Negro who is
a follower of Elijah Muhammad, "Spiritual Leader of the Lost-
Found Nation in the West." Black Muslims are distinguished
from orthodox Moslems not in the mere spelling of the word
(strictly speaking, either form is correct), but in their belief that
their leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, is the Messenger
of Allah, directly commissioned by Allah himself, who came in
person (under the name of Fard) to wake the sleeping Black
Nation and rid them of the white man's age-old domination.

A survey taken in Detroit during the early years of the
Movement (1930-1934) showed that the overwhelming majority
of Muslims — all but half a dozen or so of the two hundred families
interviewed — were recent migrants from the rural South. The
majority had come to industrial Detroit from small communities
in Virgina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
Investigations by the Wayne County Prosecutor's office indicated
the same origin.86

Those attracted to the early Movement were not only recent
migrants, but they had typically visited their old homes in the
South one or more times before becoming Muslims. The limited
freedom they had experienced in the North made them acutely
conscious of the extreme subordination of the Negro in the South
— a realization which sharpened their hostilities and increased
their sense of frustration.

Through these visits they had become more conscious of race dis-
crimination on the part of the Caucasians. After their brief sojourn
in the North they tended to reinterpret with sinister implications
incidents of race contact in the South. They began to realize that
lynchings and the indignities of the Jim Crow system were perpetu-
ated by Caucasians who worshipped the same God as they did and
worshipped Him in the same way.37

Finally, most of those who joined the early temples were, one can
fairly assume, functionally illiterate.

In 1959 the pattern of membership remained generally the
same, but the disproportion of recent, rural migrants did not

22 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

appear so extreme. Several factors may be responsible. In the
first place, the proportion of Negroes in the North and East is
now much greater than it was in the depression years 1930-1934,
and they have been there longer. The Muslims can thus proselyt-
ize a more established population. Secondly, although there is a
continuing stream of migrants from the South, many of the current
migrants are from Southern cities and towns, or at least have had
some urban experience before pushing on to the North. Again,
the Black Muslim Movement is no longer limited to the industrial
cities of the North. Its temples are scattered from New England
to San Diego and from San Francisco to Miami.38 At least a
dozen cities in the South have temples or missions.

Thus, while the vast majority of Muslims still belong to the
most disprivileged class, they are no longer necessarily recent,
rural migrants from the South, nor are they functionally illiterate.
A recent poll taken of 460 Muslims in Atlanta, Chicago, Boston
and New York39 revealed that more than half had lived in their
present city longer than five years. Fifteen per cent had lived in
the city for at least ten years, and 5V4 per cent were born there.
Forty-six per cent of the group sampled claimed to have had at
least a sixth-grade education, and only 2 per cent admitted to less
than a fourth-grade education.

But we must not lean too heavily upon this sampling. Mus-
lims are extremely wary about giving any information about them-
selves or the Movement unless such information is of obvious
propaganda value. The typical Muslim will talk freely about the
teachings of the Messenger or the treacheries of the white man,
but he will seldom provide information subject to statistical analy-
sis. If he does not evade factual questions entirely, the Muslim
brother politely refers them to his minister, who in turn invokes
Elijah Muhammad.

Critical observation and informal interviews have, therefore,
been the best tools available for determining the constituency of
the Movement. My observations and experiences with Muslims in
several cities suggest the following:

1. The membership is young. Up to 80 per cent of a typical
congregation is between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five. This
pattern has been noted again and again in temples across the

The Verdict is "Guilty"— The Sentence is Death 23

country. In the newer temples, youth is even more pronounced;
in some, fully three-quarters of the membership is under thirty
years of age. About the same proportion of the ministers are
under thirty-five; the youngest is only twenty-three.

The reason for such a concentration of youth is clear. This
is an activist movement, and the appeal is directed to youth.
Large, young families are eagerly sought, and least attention is
paid to older people reared as Christians. Older people have a
certain security in their familiar religious orientation, and they do
not readily shift to a position so unfamiliar and radical as that
preached by the Muslims.

The older people who do belong to the movement, especially
in the Northern cities, are for the most part ex-Garveyites or
ex-Moorish Science Moslems, or they have belonged to some of
the more esoteric cults flourishing in Harlem, Detroit or Chicago.
Many of these older "nationalists" consider Muhammad a natural
successor to both Garvey and Noble Drew Ali, and they have had
little difficulty in making the transition. Muhammad himself pro-
fesses "a very high opinion" of both Garvey and Noble Drew Ali;
he refers to them as "fine Muslims" and calls upon their sym-
pathizers to "follow me and cooperate in our work because we are
only trying to finish up what those before us started."40

2. The membership is predominantly male. Unlike the typi-
cal Christian church, the Muslim temples attract many more men
than women, and men assume the full management of temple
affairs. Women are honored, and they perform important func-
tions within a defined role; they are not in any sense considered
mere "property," as has sometimes been the case in classical
Islam. However, they do not constitute the organizational founda-
tion through which the Movement functions, either in service or
in finance. They work alongside the men in the various business
enterprises owned by the temples, and they share in the affairs of
the temples themselves, but almost always in roles not in conflict
with the male assumption of primary responsibility.

3. The membership is essentially lower class. A generation
ago Erdman Beynon could report:

At the time of their first contact with the prophet, practically all of
the members of the cult were recipients of public welfare, unem-

24 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

ployed, and living in the most deteriorated areas of Negro settlement
in Detroit.41

That was in the early 1930s — the worst of the depression years.
By 1937, however, Beynon observed:

At the present time, there is no known case of unemployment among
these people. Practically all of them are working in the automobile
and other factories. They live no longer in the slum section . . . but
rent homes in some of the best economic areas in which Negroes have
settled. They tend to purchase more expensive furniture, automobiles,
and clothes than do their neighbors even in these areas of higher-class
residence.42

The socio-economic pattern today is a fusion of these two trends.
Muslims are fully employed, yet they live and meet in the most
deteriorated areas of the slums.

Recruitment for the Movement is still predominantly from
among low-income groups at the lower end of the educational
scale. It has attracted a few intellectuals, an increasing number
of college students and a scattering of business and professional
men; but a majority of the membership of any given temple is
composed of domestic and factory workers, common laborers and
the like.43 An increasing number of the men, however, are skilled
and semiskilled craftsmen; the businesses owned by the group are
usually housed in buildings renovated by the Muslims themselves
— from the plumbing to the electric signs that mark the entrances.
The Muslims are justifiably proud of the "technicians" who oper-
ate their sound and recording equipment, and of their expert
stenographers and secretaries. They have a corps of excellent
photographers, who make film records of every important event;
the photographic mural on the wall of their Temple 7 Restaurant
in New York is a display of their professional skill.

Many Muslims have come into the movement from various
levels of extralegal activity. Some are ex-convicts — or even con-
victs, for at least three temples are behind prison walls. Some
have come into the Movement as dope addicts and alcoholics, or
from careers as pimps and prostitutes, pool sharks and gamblers.
But all who remain in the Movement are rehabilitated and put to
work. The members' claim that they are able to secure work
much more easily than other Negroes44 appears valid. There are

The Verdict is "Guilty"— The Sentence is Death 25

no idle Muslims; and delinquency, juvenile or adult, is almost
unheard of.

Today's Muslims, however, do not generally live in the better
residential areas available to Negroes. Where Negroes of middle-
and upper-class status have developed — or moved into — resi-
dential areas consistent with their new prosperity, Muslims have
not followed, for the Movement continues to emphasize its affilia-
tion with the working class. There are exceptions: Elijah Muham-
mad lives in a nineteen-room mansion in a quiet neighborhood
near the University of Chicago. But the Messenger has an unusu-
ally large family (seven children); his offices occupy part of the
building; and several rooms are set aside for the use of his many
guests — ministers called to Chicago for consultation and, often,
visitors from abroad. Even in this mansion there is no ostentation
in furnishings or appointments, and few of Muhammad's ministers
and followers have elected to abandon the slums.

The Muslim leaders tend to live and to build their temples
and businesses in the areas from which they draw their major
support — the heart of the Black Ghetto. This ghetto houses the
most dissident and disinherited, the people who wake up to
society's kick in the teeth each morning and fall exhausted with
a parting kick each night. These are the people who are ready
for revolution — any kind of revolution — and Muhammad astutely
builds his temples in their midst. Furthermore, in the segregated
Black Ghetto, the illusion of a "Black Nation" within a surround-
ing and hostile "white nation" takes on a semblance of reality.
The only whites around are the hated shopkeepers who "suck my
people blind." These white tradesmen are ready-made symbols —
representatives of the impersonal white oppressor who has "penned
us up like sheep, the better to drink our blood."

4. The membership is almost wholly American Negro. The
Garvey movement was built around a hard core of West Indians,
who, sharing his nationality and cultural experiences, were most
readily attracted to his program. American Negroes gave Garvey
little attention until he had already attracted a large following of
West Indian immigrants.45 But the Muslim leadership has not
especially welcomed the West Indians in this country, possibly
because the West Indian habit of making distinctions among

26 The Verdict is "Guilty"— The Sentence is Death

Negroes in terms of color could jeopardize the Muslim appeal for
a "United Black Front."

There may have been some Japanese "advisors" connected
with the Movement in its early days, when Major Takahashi was
active in Detroit. The Muslims consider all non-whites to be
Black Men, whatever their skin color, and it is worth noting that
Muhammad was indicted for pro-Japanese sympathies in the first
year of World War II.46 But no significant Oriental influence is
apparent in the Movement today.

At one time, Muhammad's chief minister was a Haitian,
Theodore Rozier. More recently, a number of Arab nationals
have been associated with the movement in teaching or advisory
capacities. Shaikh Diab, a Palestinian Arab, for example, taught
Arabic at the (Chicago) University of Islam — a combined ele-
mentary and secondary school — for several years. A number of
Egyptian nationals are friendly to the Movement and its leader-
ship, but whether they hold membership in the temples is not
known. A Nigerian graduate student also teaches at the (Chi-
cago) University of Islam, and foreign students from all parts of
Asia and Africa frequently attend the local temples, which are
found in nearly all cities having large universities.

These foreign contacts are highly prized, yet the Movement
itself remains distinctively "Black American." Other Moslems
have been welcomed as visitors, but they have not been encour-
aged to seek membership.

5. Finally, the membership is predominantly ex-Christian.
American Negroes have always been a religious people; and until
very recent times, "religion" has for them meant Protestant Chris-
tianity. Except for the Moorish-Americans and a few hundred
ex-cultists of varying past proclivities, almost all of the Muslims
seem to be drawn from Protestant families or traditions, although
there are significant numbers of ex-Catholics in the Movement.
Many Muslims have come from revivalistic sects, but a substantial
number have held active membership in the established denomi-
nations, and some of the Muslim ministers are former Christian
preachers.

The younger Muslims, especially those under twenty, have
usually had no strong Christian convictions, but almost without

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 27

exception they come from Christian homes. All too often, their
conversion reflects a serious inadequacy in their religious environ-
ment. One parent whose son had "gone Muslim" turned to his
minister in anguish. "Now," said the minister, "he expects me to
save his son from the Muslims when I haven't a single handle to
grab him by. The parents come here four or five times a year,
and the boy doesn't come at all. No wonder the Muslims got him;
he was looking for something."

. . .And Why They Become Believers

The fundamental attraction of the Black Muslim Movement
is its passion for group solidarity, its exaggerated sense of con-
sciousness-of-kind. What matters above all is that men acknowl-
edge themselves as black or white, and that all black men work
together to accomplish their group aims. These aims have been
summed up by a Muslim minister as:

To get the white man's foot off my neck, his hand out of my pocket
and his carcass off my back. To sleep in my own bed without fear,
and to look straight into his cold blue eyes and call him a liar every
time he parts his lips.47

The ultimate appeal of the Movement, therefore, is the chance to
become identified with a power strong enough to overcome the
domination of the white man — and perhaps even to subordinate
him in turn.

In this context, although the Black Muslims call their Move-
ment a religion, religious values are of secondary importance.
They are not part of the Movement's basic appeal, except to the
extent that they foster and strengthen the sense of group solidarity.

The Muslims make no secret of the fact that they count
themselves a part of the growing alliance of non-white peoples,
which they expect eventually to inundate the white race, washing
away the hated supremacy that that race has so long enjoyed.
Almost fifteen years ago, Dr. Buell Gallagher warned about ortho-
dox Islam:

There are signs that the Pan-Islamic movement may harden into a
new political nationalism, based on race, which may replace the Islam
of an international and interracial brotherhood. This Pan-Islamic

28 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

spirit which appears about to come to full fruition in a union of the
entire Muslim world against the rest of the globe is one of tomorrow's
imponderables. . . ,48

Gallagher did not refer to, or even contemplate, the Black Mus-
lims; yet his words are pertinent to them. The Muslims are not
recognized by orthodox Moslems in this country, but they con-
sider themselves Moslems and are apparently so considered by
the many Moslem countries in Africa and the Middle East who
have welcomed and honored their leaders. Certainly, to the extent
that the Pan-Islamic goal is a power structure forged out of anti-
white sentiment, these goals are shared by the Black Muslims in
America.

The anti-Christian tone of much of the Muslim teaching
also has a strong attraction for some Negroes. Occasionally this
attraction is personal, as with the youth rebelling against a parental
authority which has been symbolized by enforced church attend-
ance. But increasing numbers of Negroes are disillusioned by the
continuation of racial segregation in the church and are coming to
identify the church with social apathy and racial subordination.
To these disaffected Christians the Muslims make a shrewd appeal.
On the one hand, aware that the Christian tradition rejects hatred,
they proclaim a positive slogan: "Not anti-white, just pro-black.
We're so pro-black we havn't time to be anti anything!" But at
the same time, they insist on the close link between the Christian
church and white supremacy.

Your Christian countries, if I am correct, are the countries of Europe
and North and South America. Predominantly, this is where you find
Christianity, or at least people who represent themselves as Christians.
Whether they practice what Jesus taught is something we won't go
into. The Christian world is what we usually call the Western world.
. . . The colonization of the dark people in the rest of the world was
done by Christian powers. The number one problem that most people
face in the world today is how to get freedom from Christians.
Wherever you find non-white people today they are trying to get back
their freedom from people who represent themselves as Christians,
and if you ask these [subject] people their picture of a Christian, they
will tell you "a white man — a Slavemaster."49

The appeal works — with individuals and with groups. One
minister in Richmond, Virginia, discouraged by his denomination's

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 29

posture on the racial issues in that state, led his entire congrega-
tion out of the Christian church and into the local Muslim temple,
where he eventually became the new Muslim minister. His con-
gregation is said to have doubled since in numbers and vitality.

Because Christianity is "the white man's religion," the re-
pudiation of Christianity is an overt act of aggression against the
white man. To be identified with a movement that openly rejects
the fundamental values of the powerful majority is to increase
vastly one's self-esteem and one's stature among one's peers. This
social incentive to defiance is not limited to the Muslims; among
Negro intellectuals generally, a deviation from the white man's
ways of doing things has come to be called "independent thinking"
and reaps its rewards. The difference between the intellectual and
the Muslim is simply one of degree: the intellectual's defiance is
carefully calculated; the Muslim's is wholehearted and absolute.
Thus the intellectual will not become a Muslim, but he will em-
brace Bahai. Both men are repudiating an identity to which they
are hypersensitive in the presence of the white man, and both are
chiding Christianity for its racism. But the intellectual astutely
remains within the orbit of the white man's culture, while the
Muslims set themselves completely adrift.

The challenge of an ascetic ideal, balanced by the absence
of social barriers to affiliation and service, have brought thousands
under the banner of Muhammad. Probably in no other religious
organization are alcoholics, ex-convicts, pimps, prostitutes and
narcotic addicts welcomed so sincerely. The Christian church is,
in most instances, careful to take none to its bosom until they
are cleansed. The Muslims welcome the most unregenerate and
then set about to rehabilitate them. They have stern rules of
conduct, but no man is condemned for what he was — only for
what he refuses to be.

They say a man should never be condemned or tried twice for the
same crime once he has paid the penalty. Yet, when a man goes to
prison and pays his debt to society, when he conies out he is still
looked upon as a criminal. . . . Well, Mr. Muhammad has succeeded
there where Western Christianity has failed. When a man becomes a
Muslim, it doesn't make any difference what he was [doing] before
as long as he has stopped doing this. He is looked upon with honor
and respect and is not judged for what he was doing yesterday. And

30 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

this, I think, explains why we have so many men who were in prison
following Mr. Muhammad today.50

The stress upon — and the outward manifestation of — frater-
nal responsibility is a strong attraction for many Negroes, whose
social and civil insecurity is often extreme. The Negro has often
been characterized as a ready "joiner," and more often than not
this characterization has been justified. He is compelled to join in
order to escape the isolation and sense of helplessness he experi-
ences as a social outcast. He joins for recreation (when public
recreation is not available to him) and for security against sick-
ness and want. He joins for consolation and companionship — the
attempt at flight of an earthbound Negro in a white man's world.

All these elements are present, to some degree, in the appeal
of Muslim membership. But the appeal goes deeper: every Mus-
lim holds himself ready to die for his brother, and more especially
for his sister.51 This extreme solidarity attracts not only those in
search of security but also those in search of a cause — a focus for
the free-floating hostility that racial oppression always breeds. In
1958 a Muslim was arrested in New York City (on a false identi-
fication, as it turned out). Within an hour, several hundred of his
brothers turned up at the precinct station in a quiet show of fra-
ternal solidarity to insist that "justice be done." They waited
patiently and quietly until the wrongly accused man was released;
then they took him away with them. Membership in the local
temple immediately spiraled. Their show of solidarity had won
what the Negro community interpreted as an important victory.

The intensity of this sense of unity makes unnecessary the
usual trappings of organizations which emphasize group solidarity.
It is unrealistic (though at least one Negro leader has done so) to
dismiss the Movement as "another mutual admiration cult — an-
other opportunity for people who aren't going anywhere to hang
out the signs to prove it." The usual "signs" of social status asso-
ciated with Negro organizations are fanciful titles and flamboyant
uniforms. Among the Black Muslims, however, there are no
phony "doctors" or specious "saints," no uniforms and no prestige
offices. The only titles are those given to Muhammad and to the
hierarchy of the secret military organization, the Fruit of Islam.
To be called a "brother" or a "sister" is the highest compliment a

The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death 31

Muslim can be paid, for (as Minister Louis X of Boston puts it)
"we were brothers before we were ministers." Christians, of
course, also call each other "brother" and "sister" at times, but
one senses that the Muslims are appealing to something beyond
ordinary religious courtesy.

Another aspect of the Movement that has strong appeal-
value is its emphasis upon youth and masculinity. The ministers
are young and personable; some have been entertainers or have
otherwise had public followings. All Muslim men are clean-
shaven, close-cropped and well-dressed in conservative clothes
whenever they appear in public. Inside the temples there is a
constant movement of young men with military bearing; they move
quietly but with an unexaggerated dignity and the inescapable
suggestion of latent force. They wear no uniforms or insignia
except for a small star-and-crescent button in their lapels. Polite
and self-assured, they seem alert to the demands of the present
and confident of the future. Their attitude toward Christian
Negroes is not quite one of condescension, nor yet one of tolera-
tion. It is more a kind of patient amazement that intelligent people
could be unimpressed with the Messenger's dicta or could still find
it possible to want to live in the world of the white man.

These are the "Young Blacks" who will usher in the Black
Nation of Islam. "We are not looking for crumbs," says Mal-
colm X:

In America today, where the so-called Negro is concerned, you have
a high degree of dissatisfaction. It is hard for me to believe that the
white man, as intelligent as he is, cannot realize the degree of dis-
satisfaction in the minds of the young generation of Black Men. The
old generation forgets. ... It is on its way out. . . . What you [whites]
have to know now is what the man is thinking [whom] you will have
to deal with in the future.52

A surprising number of young people are attracted by the
Muslims' redefinition of the roles men and women should play in
the home and in the religious life of the sect. There is a strong
emphasis on the equality of individuals irrespective of sex, but
each sex is assigned a role considered proper to itself. The trend
in our larger society today seems to be toward blurring the distinct
line between the traditional social roles of men and women. The

32 The Verdict is "Guilty" — The Sentence is Death

Muslims, on the other hand, claim to have restored the woman to
a place of dignity and respect, while restoring to the man his tradi-
tional responsibilities as head of the family. Muslim women seem
to welcome the security and protection implicit in this arrange-
ment, and the men seem to exhibit a deeper sense of responsibility
than is common to others of the working class. Children seem to
profit the most, for among Muslim children, delinquency is un-
heard of.

Finally, the Negro-oriented parochial schools maintained by
the Muslims in Detroit and Chicago have attracted some followers.
If, as is planned, the Muslims establish schools in most of the
larger cities where they have temples, their numbers will probably
increase proportionately. One Chicago domestic, who was not a
Muslim, was asked whether she sent her children to the Muslim
school in her neighborhood. "Well, no, sir," she replied with some
hesitation. "But my husband, he's been talking about it. What-
ever he says. They teach the children how to behave up there,
and they teach them something about ourselves, too — all about
what the colored people have done in the world, not just the white.
You ought to know something about your own people, don't you
think? Especially if you're going to live in a free country."

Few if any children of the middle- or upper-class Negro
families attend the Muslim schools, for not many of their parents
are in the Movement. Yet there is a widespread sympathy for the
Muslim curriculum emphasis on the history of the Negro in
America and on the black African civilizations of the pre-Colonial
era. This is often expressed obliquely by resentment of the com-
pletely white-oriented training given to almost all Negro children.
Said one Nashville intellectual: "They grow up, and they don't
know "who the hell they are. They aren't white, and white rejects
them. But white is all they know about. And you talk about
adjustment! It's a wonder any of us survive!"

2 The Dynamics of
Black Nationalism

The Black Muslims are not an isolated phenomenon. They
are rooted in the whole structure of racial tension. In New York
City alone, a score or more organizations operate in the name of
black solidarity. Their central theme is always the glorification of
black civilization and the deprecation of the white man's culture,
which, whenever it has been adopted by the black man, has re-
duced him to impotence and ignominy.

In the South, where resentment of the white man has until
recently been less overt, black nationalism has expressed itself in
lodges and fraternal societies, in which tens of thousands of
Negroes learn various "ancient rites" of supposed Afro-Asian
origin. Every Negro community in the South has its multitude of
legends illustrating the Negro's superior physical strength, sexual
prowess and moral integrity. "Mr. Charlie" is never a match for
the cunning of "OP John." And "Miss Ann," though she is "as
good a ol' white woman" as can be found anywhere, remains in
the mind of the Southern Negro a white woman and, therefore, a
legitimate target for the petty machinations of her Negro servant,
"Annie Mae."

Most Negroes do not, of course, spend most of their time
"thinking black." But no part of Negro life is wholly free of this
glorification. A defensive kind of black nationalism finds occa-
sional expression in the quarrels of Negro children everywhere.
"Black is honest," they cry out, and "the blacker the berry, the
sweeter the juice." Even the Negro churches are often tinged with
nationalism. An obscure African slave who rescued the prophet
Jeremiah from a cistern into which he had been thrown by his
enemies is exalted as a symbol of righteousness and fearlessness
in the service of God. And the biblical promise that Ethiopia

33

34 The Dynamics of Black Nationalism

shall soon "stretch out her hands" is taken as a divine pledge that
black sovereignty will be restored.

From the soil of repression and hostility grow bitter fruits,
and black nationalism is one of the most bitter. It feeds on the
prejudices, stereotypes and discriminations which tend to charac-
terize relations between whites and blacks in America. It accepts
the white man's allegation that there are "inherent differences"
between people who have different colored skins. But it inverts
the values: it worships what it cannot change. It forges a weapon
of vengeance for the Black Man out of the very attributes for
which he is held to be inferior.

The Black Muslims have made a science of black nation-
alism. They have made black the ideal, the ultimate value; they
have proclaimed the Black Man to be the primogenitor of all
civilization, the Chosen of Allah, "the rightful ruler of the Planet
Earth." And their extreme racist doctrine has attracted more
than a hundred thousand adherents — a vivid warning of the deep
resentment American Negroes harbor for their status in our
society and of the futility they feel about the likelihood of a genu-
ine and peaceful change.

I. BITTER SOIL AND BITTER FRUITS

Group Consciousness

An interesting phenomenon is found in every society in
which several discrete groups live side-by-side. This phenomenon
is known as consciousness of kind, that state of mind in which a
man is vividly aware of himself as a member of a group different
from other groups — as a Negro, a white man, an Irish Catholic,
an Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a Jew.

Consciousness of kind usually operates as a defense mecha-
nism for a minority group which is seeking to preserve its identity
or its most cherished values. But group consciousness may also
be aroused in a majority group when a minority is seeking to
merge with and lose itself in the larger, more powerful or other-
wise pre-eminent group. In such a case, the majority may feel

The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 35

that some of its prized values are threatened: its social status,
racial purity, religious cohesion — or even its economic security or
physical survival. Majority group consciousness is an almost in-
stinctive defense against such a real or imagined threat.

The group consciousness of a minority is, of course, in-
creased by acts of discrimination directed against it by an effective
majority. An effective majority need not be a numerical majority:
11,000 Europeans constitute an effective majority in the African
state of Uganda, which they share with 6l/2 million Africans and
about 75,000 Asians; and 20,000 Europeans are an effective
majority in Tanganyika, a country of &V2 million blacks.

An effective majority, whatever its size, holds the main con-
centration of power. Its power may be actual, as in the military
superiority of a contingent of soldiers armed with modern weapons
and garrisoned in a native village; it may be potential, as when a
pair of patrolmen walk the streets of a tough neighborhood; or it
may be imaginary, as is the power of the cult of priests or magi-
cians in a primitive society. When it enjoys actual power backed
by a massive numerical superiority — as does the white majority in
the United States — the group consciousness of the minority can
be very sharp indeed.

For any minority group, faced with a constant environment
of prejudice and discrimination, three basic types of response are
possible. These responses are avoidance, acceptance and aggres-
sion.

Avoidance

Group consciousness is a form of consolation derived from
a shared sense of discrimination; it is often expressed in ambiv-
alence and self-hatred. Such an acrid consolation is not for every
taste. Many individuals would rather not be identified with a
minority; they would prefer not to have a personal awareness of
its existence or its claim on them as members. Such persons may
seek to avoid entirely their identification with their group.

Avoidance may also be motivated by a haunting concern for
personal security, physical or psychological. In this case, while

36 The Dynamics of Black Nationalism

acknowledging themselves as members of a group, individuals may
seek to avoid the meaning of that identity in a wider context.
Many Negroes, for example, avoid contact with whites by doing
business with Negro businesses wherever possible; if they find it
necessary to deal with white businesses, they order goods and pay
their bills by mail. In this way, they minimize the likelihood of
being insulted or otherwise humiliated by whites. Such avoidance
also reduces the possibility of an inadvertent breach of the highly
complex "etiquette" of race relations. In many parts of the South,
a Negro who violates the etiquette requirements imposed by the
whites may readily incur physical harm or even death.

For those individuals who wish to avoid their identification
with a minority group, the most complete form of avoidance is to
withdraw entirely by "passing" into the dominant group. But
such passing is often hindered by distinctive names, accents or
other cultural habits associated with the minority group. Racial
minorities such as Negroes encounter a far more immediate ob-
stacle: their distinctive color or "visibility," which is an unrelent-
ing barrier to total acceptability. Thousands of fair-skinned
Negroes do pass as white, however, and some dark-skinned
Negroes pass as Filipinos, Spaniards, Italians or Mexicans.

In some Southern cities, light-skinned Negroes often pass in
order to shop at certain stores or to use such facilities as libraries,
toilets, theaters and hotels. In Memphis, one family of light-
skinned Negroes regularly attend white churches. "This way,"
they explain, "we get to hear speakers not otherwise available to
us, and the children have a chance to hear the great music and
see the pageants performed on festival occasions." In Boston, at
least two Negro businessmen passing as white operate businesses
in white neighborhoods and because of their locations, cater
almost exclusively to whites. In Birmingham, a fair-skinned Negro
lunches occasionally at the best downtown hotels "just to look at
the other side from time to time." In New Jersey, a Negro passing
as white and married to a white woman holds a major executive
position in a nationally-known drug firm. Such examples could
be multiplied a thousandfold.

A second kind of avoidance is often exhibited by upper-class
members of the Negro minority, especially those in the business

The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 37

or professional groups who are not dependent upon the white
majority for a livelihood. These individuals often seek to insulate
themselves from contact with lower-class Negroes as well as from
the whites, and they do not identify themselves with the common
problems of their group. They become a society unto themselves,
"asking the white man for nothing" and sharing nothing with the
Negroes from whom they derive their status and wealth. They
form themselves into tight little cliques, which play at being part
of the white society from which they are excluded.

For those individuals who wish to avoid the social meaning
of their minority-group status, avoidance may take the form of
developing towns or communities composed principally of mem-
bers of their own group. Even when such residential segregation
is initiated and enforced by the dominant group, minority-group
members may actually prefer to live in the ghettos, rather than
contend with the constant harrassment incident to living in the
larger community. But no ghetto, forced or voluntary, can really
ward off the consequences of prejudice and discrimination; and
the mere fact of its existence is a constant reminder of the lack
of a more healthful and harmonious relationship.

Finally, avoidance may take the form of escape from feelings
of inferiority and futility while maintaining contact with the domi-
nant group. Those who choose this path attempt to obliterate the
meaning of their minority-group status by emphasizing and en-
hancing their status as individuals. The result may be clearly
beneficial — a determined self-improvement in order to meet the
approved values of the dominant group in such areas as education
and professional skill.

The other extreme, however, is an escape into a world of
make-believe, where fantasies of wealth, power or position in
"society" shut out the realities of a humiliating and frustrating
day-to-day existence. Negroes of wealth and education, whose
only barrier to unrestricted participation in the complete life of
the community is that fact that they are Negroes, probably con-
stitute the largest single class of social neurotics. Often their rela-
tionship to their white social counterparts is tenuous and marginal,
but they can no longer find a place acceptable to their heightened
sense of personal worth among the Negro classes out of which

38 The Dynamics of Black Nationalism

they rose. In their frustration, the creative talent which pushed
them to the top and set them off from the masses is too often
crudely dissipated.

Acceptance

Some minority-group members feel that it is sensible to
accept what cannot be changed or avoided: "You don't like it,
but what can you do?" This attitude of conscious resignation or
futility is the most common form of acceptance, but it is not the
whole story. At the other extreme is the' wholehearted acceptance
of disparate social conditions characteristic of a caste society such
as pre-Gandhian India. In such a society every group — high or
low, favored or scorned — is felt to have a divinely ordained place
in the sun. Social discrimination is no more than obedience to the
divine order of the universe, and resentment against it would be
as unthinkable as resentment of God. This attitude comes natu-
rally, of course, to many white men in America; but there is some
evidence that it was also widely held among American Negroes
several decades ago, and vestiges of this kind of adjustment be-
havior are probably retained among the present "folk Negroes"
of isolated rural areas and among certain family servants who
identify closely with their employers.

Few Negroes today exhibit this wholehearted acceptance of
discrimination and special privilege, but many will consciously
defer in specific situations in which inferiority is implied. Many
Negroes ride Jim-Crow busses, for example, when no other means
of transportation is available; and a Negro servant may accept the
epithet "boy" or "girl" because to reject it would mean the loss of
employment and the possibility of livelihood. But, in both in-
stances, the individuals involved may categorically reject the
whole status pattern and its implications. They reason simply,
"We've got to live if we're going to fight!"

These outward accommodations to specific situations of dis-
crimination or prejudice are often misinterpreted as a whole-
hearted acceptance of inferior role or status. Such an assumption
is, of course, illogical, and it can only be made by a mind which

The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 39

brings to the situation a serious misconception of Negro intelli-
gence. No healthy mind assumes that another healthy mind will
welcome an inferior status or its degrading concomitants.

Prejudice has been called "the refuge of a sick mind" and
"a method of transferring our sickness to others." Certainly the
Negro who welcomes the kind of social subordination imposed
upon him in our country may be considered to be quite ill. No
more can be said for those who practice it.

Aggression

Aggression is an act or a pattern of behavior which aims to
discomfort, injure or destroy a person or his values. As an indi-
vidual response among American Negroes, it may express itself
in very different forms. To be a "race man" — that is, a profes-
sional champion of the in-group, speaking or writing in its defense,
or agitating for its rights — is a common expression of direct ag-
gression, especially among the upper classes but increasingly
among all classes. Boycott; inefficiency and sloppy work done for
white employers; ostentation, such as expensive automobiles or
homes; refusal to observe the customary forms of etiquette — all
these are direct means of expressing personal hostility. Some
physical attacks also take place. Negroes seldom initiate physical
attacks against whites, but there is less hesitation now to return
violence for violence, whatever the cost.

Literature, art and humor are readily available vehicles of
direct aggression, and they are widely used as such. The Negro
press is well known for its explicit posture against prejudice and
discrimination, but countless individual Negro poets and novelists
have also used their talents to express their resentment of and
hostility toward the white man.

Not all aggression, however, is overt and outspoken. Silence
or absolute immobility may also be aggressive, as, for example,
when a Negro fails to respond to what he considers a degrading
epithet or refuses to yield his seat on a public bus or trolley to a
white person.

Even certain postures of meekness and deference may be

40 The Dynamics of Black Nationalism

expressions of aggression, as with the apparent humility and self-
effacement often displayed in situations of great dependence or
where intimidation is present. The suffering then experienced is
accepted as a means to ultimate victory, for from the suffering,
power is derived. Again, meekness is a Christian virtue, and
through its expression the humble Negro asserts his moral superi-
ority to the arrogant white. Aggressive meekness is also a common
device for ridiculing the white man; while he egoistically accepts
the meek behavior at face value, the Negro may be laughing at
him secretly for his gullibility.

So sensitive are white men to any challenge to their position
that even a possibility that aggression might be expressed is con-
sidered dangerous. In 1957 a Negro in North Carolina was
arrested and charged with "assault" because he looked at a white
woman; and in Georgia, a year later, a parade featuring a high
school band and the usual corps of majorettes was stopped and
disbanded because Negroes joined other citizens in standing along
the street to watch. In the southern part of the United States and
in South Africa, even a suspicion that a Negro might want to
strike back can cost the Negro his freedom or his life.

But aggression can also be misdirected. Hurt and angry, yet
too frightened to act against his powerful tormentor, the Negro
sometimes thrashes about, seeking a target for his hostility. Often
unconsciously, he displaces his aggression onto other minority
groups — Jews, for example — which cannot retaliate so effectively.
All too often, the aggression is simply inverted: Negroes turn their
rage against other Negroes or against themselves. The result is
sporadic intra-group violence and a general splintering of group
solidarity, a disastrous development in a world unsympathetic to
the dignity of powerless individuals or groups.

Even responsible and controlled aggression, as a response to
offenses against one's human dignity, is a dangerous undertaking,
and it is shrouded in moral and ethical ambivalence. Many indi-
viduals prefer the paths of avoidance and acceptance. In every
minority, however, there will always be men who are willing to
confront directly the source of their oppression and who will seek
to remove, moderate, deflect or destroy it.

The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 41

H. BLACK NATIONALISM, U. S. A.

Stereotype and Identity

Aggression as an actual and continuing expression of Negro
protest has long been underestimated in America. An image of
the Negro as casual, passive and content with his lot was fabri-
cated during the days of slavery. Manifestly absurd, it was ac-
cepted as fact and has persisted into modern times. Such a picture
has done little to prepare Americans to live together in peace and
mutual respect.

Historians have contributed to the confusion by stereotyping
the Negro slave as a docile, devoted, contented servant, or else by
ignoring him altogether. The Negro's active protests to the condi-
tion of slavery imposed upon him by a comparatively infinite
power do not commonly appear in America's textbooks. Knowl-
edge of the numerous slave revolts and insurrections, for example,
is available only to the scholar who has the facilities for laborious
research.

The problem is intensified by the racial segregation which
prevents knowledgeable contact between whites and educated
Negroes. Incredible as it seems, many Americans are surprised
to learn that Negroes love and hate, accept and reject, with all the
intensity of feeling common to human nature. Or perhaps it is
not so incredible: he who would systematically degrade his fellow
man must defend himself against reprisals. Since this cannot be
done empirically, one way to gain a comforting sense of invulner-
ability is to pretend that the problem does not exist. If the Negro
does not feel anything, his docility can be taken for granted.

Aggressive leaders will arise, however. Since they threaten
the protective fantasy, the most militant of them must be dis-
counted and isolated from the Negro masses. By dismissing them
as "Communists" or "radicals" (or whatever is beyond the pale
at any given moment), we can keep our fantasy of the contented
Negro pure. But the Negro is not contented, and he will be heard.
If his moderate leaders are dismissed as radical, then movements
which are in fact radical will become more and more extreme, if

42 The Dynamics of Black Nationalism

only to get on ground where the white man will acknowledge their
existence.

We are mired in complacency. The majority of unsuspecting
whites are still shocked with disbelief and chagrin by the Negro's
occasional public repudiation of the stereotype of good-natured,
uncomplaining docility, which they have always accepted as
true. When the Negro they thought they "knew" so well steps
out of the role in which he has been cast, it seems to many like an
act of treason. For example, when Marcus Garvey announced in
1920 that "the white man need expect no more Negro blood shed
on his behalf and that "the dying to be done by the black man in
the future . . . will be done to make himself free," the speech was
sufficiently alarming to be cited as sedition.1 And when, forty
years later, Negroes insisted upon being served at the lunch coun-
ters of stores which readily accepted their money in every other
department, no less a person than ex-President Harry Truman — a
man who had done much during his administration to remove
racial barriers — cried out in outrage.

It is incredible that such expressions "against the system"
should be viewed with surprise. It would be logically more sur-
prising if resentment and hositility were not felt by a people who
conceive themselves as oppressed and who can identify their
oppressors. But this is precisely the tragedy of America, that she
is oblivious of the smoldering resentments of millions for whom
the American Creed is often a mockery. This "ignorance about
the Negro is not, it must be stressed, just lack of interest and
knowledge. It is a tense and high-strung restriction and distortion
of knowledge, and it indicates much deeper dislocations within the
minds of Southern whites"2 — and, to a lesser extent, of the entire
white community.

This "convenient ignorance"3 on the part of whites com-
pounds the frustrations of the Negro minority, which now more
than ever before is determined to be heard — or at least seen. The
conspicuous consumption; the overemphasis on titles; the preoc-
cupation with such values as academic degrees, foreign travel and
unique professional appointments; and the increasing activity of
organized protest — all these add up to an open rejection of racial
anonymity and the traditional stereotype. Many of these activities

The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 43

are also, of course, valuable in themselves. They are like the
"double duty dollar" — the money a Negro spends with a business
which employs Negroes, thus (1) buying goods for himself and
(2) helping to provide jobs for others of his race.

Every important aspect of the Negro's behavior is likely to
have a race angle, though he himself is not always conscious of
that fact.

To the Negro himself, the Negro problem is all-important. A Negro
probably seldom talks to a white man . . . without consciousness of
this problem. Even in a mixed white and Negro group of closest
friends in Northern intellectual circles, and probably even in an all-
Negro group, the Negro problem constantly looms in the background.
It steers the jokes and allusions if it is not one of the dominant topics
of conversation.

The Negro leader, the Negro social scientist, the Negro man of
arts and letters is likely to view all social, economic, political, indeed,
even aesthetic and philosophical issues from the Negro angle. What
is more, he is expected to do so. He would seem entirely out of place
if he spoke simply as a member of a community, a citizen of Amer-
ica. ... In the existing American civilization he can attain some de-
gree of distinction, but always as a representative of "his people," not
as an ordinary American. . . . The Negro genius is imprisoned in the
Negro problem.4

Black Nationalism

Under the circumstances confronting him, the Negro is re-
quired to be "Negro" before — and sometimes to the exclusion of
— anything else. At some point, therefore, he will inevitably be
tempted to glorify that from which he cannot escape. He may
repudiate the white man's stereotype, turn his eyes from the pain-
ful reality and substitute for them an idealized self-image. Draw-
ing on the political parallel, in which each state considers itself
distinct from and superior to its neighbors, this attitude has come
to be known as black nationalism.

It would be absurd to say, of course, that all Negro race
pride is only a rationalized form of acceptance. It is often a sim-
ple and spontaneous awareness of one's human dignity. Such, for
example, was the pride of Denmark Vesey, an ex-slave who engi-
neered an elaborate insurrection in Charleston in 1822:

44 The Dynamics of Black Nationalism

Even whilst walking through the streets in company with another,
he was not idle; for if his companion bowed to a white person he
would rebuke him, and observe that all men were born equal, and
that he was surprised that any one would degrade himself by such
conduct; that he would never cringe to the whites, nor ought any one
who had the feelings of a man. When answered, "We are slaves," he
would sarcastically and indignantly reply, "You deserve to remain
slaves."5

Vesey was hanged, along with thirty-four confederates, for leading
the insurrection; but he died as he had lived, with courage and
conviction, acknowledging no man his inherent superior.

Black nationalism is more than courage and rebellion; it is
a way of life. It is an implicit rejection of the "alien" white culture
and an explicit rejection of the symbols of that culture, balanced
by an exaggerated and undiluted pride in "black" culture. It in-
volves a drastic reappraisal not only of present realities but also
of the past and future. The black nationalist revises history (or
corrects it, as he would say) to establish that today's black men
are descended from glorious ancestors, from powerful and enlight-
ened rulers and conquerors. This reconstruction of history may
reach ridiculous extremes; and it can never be accepted by white
men, who, to bolster their own security, must perceive history as
a record of white men's achievements. But a proud history is
essential to the black nationalist's self-respect. Essential, too, is
the certainty of a brilliant future, in which the inherent superiority
of his race will triumph and he will again rule the world.

In any technical sense, of course, it is inaccurate for Ameri-
can Negroes to adopt a black nationalist position. The term im-
plies that they are — politically, culturally, ethnically or racially —
a distinct group. But this is emphatically not true. Politically they
are Americans, as American as one can be (with the sole excep-
tion of the American Indian). Culturally they are merged into the
American mainstream; as Lloyd Warner observes, they are "cul-
turally more like the white 'old American' than [are] any other
sub-groups in America."6 Nor are they ethnically separated from
other Americans, holding allegiance to an earlier shared culture.
On the contrary:

The conspicuous feature of the Negro in America is that his aboriginal
culture was smashed. . . . The importance of this basic fact for the

The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 45

Negro in America cannot be overestimated. It means in effect that
the old types of social organization and all their derivations could not
continue, but a new type of emergent adjustment derived from the
new conditions would have to be established.7

Nor, finally, are they racially distinct. "Race" is at best a nebulous
term.8 There are no pure races, and it would be especially inap-
propriate to apply the term to the American Negro, who is at once
African and Anglo-Saxon, Indian and French, Portuguese, Span-
ish, German and Italian — a composite of every major "racial
stock"9 and every nationality of Western Europe.10

W. E. B. DuBois observes that a common suffering, rather
than a common biology or ethnic identity, has been the important
factor uniting the Negro in what is usually referred to as "nation-
alism."

The so-called American Negro group . . . while it is in no sense abso-
lutely set off physically from its fellow Americans, has nevertheless
a strong, hereditary cultural unity born of slavery, of common suffer-
ing, prolonged proscription, and curtailment of political and civil
rights. . . . Prolonged policies of segregation and discrimination have
involuntarily welded the mass almost into a nation within a
nation. . . -11

The "nationalism" of the American Negro is not voluntary,
prompted by a desire to set himself apart in order to preserve
some cultural values. It is, rather, a defensive response to external
forces — hostile forces which threaten his creative existence. It is
a unity born of the wish not to conserve but to escape a set of
conditions.

Black nationalism seizes the conditions of disprivilege and
turns them to advantage as a tool for eliminating the disprivilege.
It challenges the supercilious attitude of the majority group by
glorifying the unique symbols of the blacks — symbols which the
whites consider repugnant. Some sociologists have labeled this
behavior "negritude":

... an exaltation of African-Negro specificity, a "kind of highly
elaborated counterracism." ... It involves a "particularly intense
racial awareness," not uncoupled to political activity and demands.
It is a term descriptive, also, of an appreciation of a new black unity
experienced by its adherents, a consciousness of sharing in a past
and in the making of the future. . . .12

46 The Dynamics of Black Nationalism

Nationalism is ordinarily political; it refers to common values
arising out of the existence of a state. Black nationalism addresses
itself not to an existent state but to a state of mind.13 But if there
is no past or present black nation, what is to prevent the projection
of a Black Nation of the future?

To the extent that it is couched in political terms — and this
varies from movement to movement — black nationalism envisions
and works toward the creation of such a state. In the creed of
some movements, this political goal is relatively insignificant, a
potentiality which the black man may or may not choose to realize.
For the Black Muslims, however, the goal of a Black Nation is of
consuming importance. The Muslims do not rest content with any
concept of black nationalism that is not expressed in concrete
economic and political terms.

Black Nationalism and Social Class

In the American Negro groups of highest and lowest status,
hardly anyone wants to be a Negro. Upper-class Negroes seek to
identify themselves with the white society; lower-class Negroes
prefer to identify themselves with any group except the whites in
order to escape the danger and humiliation that all Negroes incur.
Only middle-class Negroes are generally willing to acknowledge
themselves as Negroes and, at the same time, to seek an accommo-
dation with the white society. Black nationalism, therefore, with
its repudiation of both Negro identity and white culture, sinks its
roots deepest in the lower class.

Upper-class Negroes are rarely "Negro" by choice. Those
who have obvious strains of white ancestry are often at great pains
to dissociate themselves from those who do not, and they are
remarkably oblivious of the implications of their whiteness.
Darker Negroes of the upper class must content themselves with
pointed references to their "Indian ancestry" lest they be mistaken
for full-blooded Negroes — an intolerable possibility.

The Negro of the upper class is largely committed to the
idea that America's racial dilemma will be resolved when the
Negro loses his distinctiveness, social and biological. He would
prefer to become so thoroughly assimilated into the American

The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 47

mainstream as to be biologically indistinct, for his new status could
not then be revoked or qualified in a future crisis. In short, the
ultimate security in living among a white majority is to be white.
But this security is almost impossible to achieve in view of the
general disdain for miscegenation. The barrier is circular: un-
qualified social acceptance is the only gateway to racial anonymity,
which in turn is the only gateway to unqualified social acceptance.

For the time being, therefore, the upper-class Negro is set-
tling for that degree of assimilation which will make him socially
indistinct from those whites who are his counterpart in terms of
education, affluence and refinement. He tends to venerate every-
thing that is "white" and "Western." In spite of the inconvenience
of his color, he sees himself as part of this tradition; and he resents
as irrational and unjust the social custom which emphasizes his
black skin while overlooking the fact that his ancestry is partly
European and his culture totally Western.

The members of the growing Negro middle class are least
concerned about disestablishing themselves as Negroes. They
ridicule the upper class as "neurotic sub-marginals" who make
themselves ridiculous in trying to attract the white man's attention.
Nor can they see the importance of having white ancestry, since
almost all American Negroes share this qualification to some
degree. Besides, white ancestry is not a criterion of the white
man's judgment when he erects barriers to set himself apart from
all others. Segregation is directed at a class, not at members with-
in it; and all Negroes, whatever their names, ancestry or skin color,
belong by definition to the segregated class.

The Negro middle class is somewhat ambivalent about black
nationalism. The black nationists' emphasis on a united struggle
against subordination has a certain appeal, but the rejection of
Negro identity and the search for cultural roots in Afro-Asian
traditions has little or no appeal. The middle-class Negro feels no
need to be either "Asiatic" or "European." He accepts the desig-
nation "American Negro" with no particular sense of opprobrium,
and often with a certain pride, for he thus identifies himself with
America's most important minority — a minority which has dis-
tinguished itself, in a brief span of history, by an achievement of
progress unequaled by either "Europeans" or "Asiatics."

48 The Dynamics of Black Nationalism

The self-image of the Negro middle class is one of ability
and militancy, uncontaminated by either sycophancy or hatred for
the white man. The middle-class Negro is not obsessed with status
pretensions, as is the upper class, nor does he suffer the abject
despair of the Negro masses. As a result, he seldom displays the
kind of insecurity that needs to search for ancestral pegs upon
which to hang a claim for present status and acceptance.

The main appeal of all black nationalist movements, then,
is to the Negro lower class. Here the Negro's resentment is crys-
tallized and open. He has long despaired of the white man's justice
and of the trustworthiness of the "acceptable" Negro leaders who
court the white man's favor. Moreover, he is already at the bot-
tom of the ladder, so his economic and social position is not
vulnerable. An indiscreet word, an admission of hostility or an
identification with "radical" or "extremist" groups can cost him
nothing. What has he to lose if the demagogues of black nation-
alism fan his resentment into hatred, openly expressed in defiance
of all white men and their compliant Negro "friends"?

The lower-class Negro lives in a no man's land between two
alien worlds, both of which he spurns. Unlike his upper-class
brother, he has no conscious desire to be white or even "like the
whites," whom he identifies with most of his misfortunes. But
neither will he accept the implications of being "Negro" — a white
man's word, which he sees as an epithet of contempt. The black
race has a rich cultural heritage, extending thousands of years
into the past; but the black men who were torn from their homes
and shipped to the New World in chains were carefully isolated
from that heritage. The history of the "Negro" begins in the tor-
ments and degradation of slavery in America. Unlike his better-
educated brothers, the lower class Negro is not generally aware
that his ancestors served their new nation with distinction and
that the term can be accepted with confidence — indeed, with pride.
He is agonizingly aware of what "Negro" implies to most Ameri-
cans, its humiliating connotations of white supremacy.

The lower-class Negro is ripe for the lure of black nation-
alism. He is proud to rediscover himself as a Black Man, linked
to the great and venerable civilizations of the "single black conti-
nent" of Afro-Asia. He is grateful for a mystique, especially one

The Dynamics of Black Nationalism 49

dignified as a religion, that rationalizes his resentment and hatred
as spiritual virtues in a cosmic war of good against evil. And he is
jubilant at his new vision of the future — a future not of racial
equality, for which he believes the white man has shown himself
unfit, but of black supremacy. For "black," to the black nation-
alist, is a quality and symbol of all that is glorious, triumphant and
divine.

Many counterpressures exist, of course, to restrain the lower-
class Negro from active participation in black nationalist move-
ments. The Christian church is still powerful, though its magic
has been seriously eroded. Personal friendships with white men,
where they exist, make the absolute generalizations of black
nationalism difficult to accept. Some Negroes, like some white
men, find a certain comfort and security in being considered in-
ferior; they cling to the status in which all their personal failures
are overlooked, since nothing much is expected of them. Others
have experienced so rarely the feeling of superiority that they can
scarcely imagine it as a way of life.

Above all, the lower-class Negro is a decent and responsible
human being, loath to give his life over to hatred and vengeance.
He will not do so unless forced to the wall by a smug and callous
white society. The future of black nationalism, therefore, will
ultimately be decided not by the demagogues but by ourselves.

3 Black Nationalism:
The Minor Leagues

All black nationalist movements have in common three char-
acteristics: a disparagement of the white man and his culture, a
repudiation of Negro identity and an appropriation of "Asiatic"
culture symbols. Within this framework, however, they take shape
in a remarkable variety of creeds and organizations. The smallest
groups range in temperament from the innocuous United African
Nationalist Movement, with its New York City street-corner
harangues, to the criminally trained, marijuana-smoking Ras
Tafarians, who are known to have murdered at least six people:
two British soldiers, a Chinese shopkeeper and three of their own
number whose devotion to the cult had begun to flag.

The more influential black nationalist movements also seize
upon varying interests as focal points for group identification or
as vehicles of counteraggression against the white majority. One
favorite focus is religion; another is political or politico-economic
goals. The former has no immediate concern with a national state;
the latter makes the creation of a state central to its appeal. These
two emphases are perhaps best represented in the Moorish Science
Temple movement of Noble Drew All and the Universal Negro
Improvement Association of Marcus Garvey, both of which flour-
ished about the time of World War I.

The Moorish Science movement was essentially religious;
Garvey's UNIA was primarily political. The raison d'etre of both
was to devise some means of escaping the implications of being a
Negro in a white-dominated society. Noble Drew sought a psychic
escape: by changing their names and the symbols of their culture,
his Moors hoped to change their social fortunes. For Garvey, the
logical solution was to remove all American Negroes to an inde-
pendent African state. Both men had substantial followings, but

Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues 51

neither did much to change the conditions that were ultimately
responsible for whatever measure of success they could claim.

Religious Nationalism: The Moorish Science Temples

About 1913, a forty-seven-year-old North Carolina Negro
named Timothy Drew established a "Moorish Science Temple" in
Newark, New Jersey.1 From this seed grew a movement that, at
its peak, had established temples in Detroit, Harlem, Chicago,
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and in numerous cities across the South.
Membership may have been as high as twenty or thirty thousand
during the lifetime of "the Prophet."

Drew never seems to have had a formal education, but at
some point he apparently had been exposed to Oriental philoso-
phy. He was particularly impressed by the lack of race conscious-
ness in Oriental religious thought and saw in it a possible answer
to the Negro's plight in a color-conscious America. If Negroes
could somehow establish an identity with the Oriental peoples,
whose religious philosophies either knew nothing of the "curse of
Canaan"2 or else found it irrelevant, they might become less sus-
ceptible to the everyday hazards of being "everyday-Negroes" in
America.

In pursuing this goal, Drew did not allow himself to be
troubled by the inconveniences of history. He simply decreed
that, thenceforth, American Negroes were to be known as "Asi-
atics."

He became obsessed with the idea that salvation for the Negro people
lay in the discovery by them of their national origin; i.e., they must
know whence they came, and refuse longer to be called Negroes,
black folk, colored people, or Ethiopians. They must henceforth call
themselves Asiatics, to use the generic term, or, more specifically,
Moors, or Moorish Americans.3

To document this ethnic transformation, he issued "Nationality
and Identification Cards" to his followers. Each card bore the
Islamic symbol (the star and crescent), an image of clasped hands,
and a numeral "7" in a circle. It announced that the bearer hon-
ored "all the Divine Prophets, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, and

52 Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues

Confucius" and pronounced upon him "the blessings of the God
of our Father, Allah." It identified him as "a Moslem under the
Divine Laws of the Holy Koran of Mecca, Love, Truth, Peace,
Freedom, and Justice" and concluded with the assurance: "i AM
A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES." Each card was validated by
the subscription, "NOBLE DREW ALI, THE PROPHET."

Drew's movement spread west from New Jersey to Pitts-
burgh, Detroit and Chicago, and there were temples in a number
of cities across the South. In Chicago the movement rapidly
gained momentum and soon became a problem for law enforce-
ment officials. The members of the cult felt an exaggerated sense
of security and importance in their new "Asiatic" status, sym-
bolized most openly in the red fezzes which the male members
were required to wear at all times. But their social metamorphosis
was not accepted by the whites, who saw no reason to relinquish
their traditional racial constructs. The Moors' confidence, how-
ever, was not diminished. They were certain that the whites (or
"Europeans") were soon to be destroyed and that the "Asiatics"
would soon be in control.

A number of disturbances developed. The Moors, made conspicuous
by their fezzes, walked the streets, treating white folk with open con-
tempt. In various parts of the Middle West they became anathema
to the police.

In Chicago, affairs reached the point where members of the cult
would accost white people on the streets, and showing their member-
ship cards or the button they wore in their coat lapels, would sing the
praises of their prophet, now known as Noble Drew AH, because he
had freed them from the curse of European (white) domination.4

The cult members believed that the imminent destruction of the
whites was signified by the appearance in the sky of a star within
a crescent moon.

As the racial irritations cued by the Moors' aggressive be-
havior grew worse, Nobel Drew Ali issued a warning to his fol-
lowers to exercise more restraint. They were cautioned to "stop
flashing [their] cards before Europeans" and to avoid making
agitating speeches on their jobs. "We did not come to cause con-
fusion," the Prophet observed. "Our work is to uplift the nation."

Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues 53

Despite Drew's sincerity and simple idealism, the Moorish
Science movement eventually addressed itself to some new direc-
tions not anticipated in its founding philosophy. As is character-
istic of mass movements, its growth and expansion began to attract
better educated but less scrupulous individuals, who saw it as an
irresistible opportunity for private gain and exploitation. Anxious
to extend the movement and aware of his own limitations, Noble
Drew Ali opened the door to these men; but the "new blood"
proved to be costly indeed. The less discriminating followers of
the Prophet — like their counterparts in other religious sects — were
soon duped into buying various charms, relics, magical potions,
pictures and spurious literature concerning their Asiatic heritage.
The leaders grew rich off the credulous masses; and when it be-
came apparent that Noble Drew Ali was the chief obstacle to a
more complete exploitation, he was shunted aside. Eventually, he
was killed.

The responsibility for the death of Noble Drew Ali has never
been officially placed. During the struggle for power among the
leaders of the cult, one leader was killed. Ali was not in Chicago
at the time of the killing, but upon his return he was arrested and
charged with murder by police officials, who were at best some-
what weary of his movement. He was never brought to trial, for
he died mysteriously shortly after being released on bond. The
cause of his death is variously attributed to a "third degree" given
him while under arrest or to a subsequent beating administered
by his rivals for power within the movement.

After the Prophet's death, the cult split into numerous
smaller groups. It is no longer a potent force in the Negro com-
munity, though some temples remain active in the industrial cities
of the North. Many present-day Moors believe that Noble Drew
Ali is reincarnate in their present leaders, and the Holy Koran of
the Moorish Holy Temple of Science continues to be the sacred
book of the various sects. (The Holy Koran, not to be confused
with the Quran of classical Islam, contains the teachings of the
Prophet, along with various other esoteric materials.) Member-
ship continues to be limited to "Asiatics" — that is, to non-Cauca-
sians— who renounce the traditional category and the implications
of being "colored" or "Negro." Each new member attaches the

54 Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues

term "el" or "bey" to his name in signification of his Asiatic
status. Initiation fees are usually a dollar; stipulated dues are paid
thereafter.

The cult considers itself Moslem, but it retains many of the
familiar markings of Christianity. Jesus, for example, remains a
prominent figure in the worship services; and hymns, although
revised to appropriate the new teachings, retain the rhythmic chant
forms of the familiar Negro spirituals. Love is taught as the
guiding spirit of the universe: "the fallen sons and daughters of
the Asiatic Nation of North America need to learn to love instead
of hate; and to know of their higher self and lower self."

The Moors believe that "before you can have a God you
must have a nationality" and that Noble Drew Ali, who was a
prophet ordained of God, gave his people the North African state
of Morocco to be their nation. In this connection, they attach
great signification to names:

The name means everything; by taking the Asiatic's name from him
and calling him Negro, black, colored, or Ethiopian, the European
stripped the Moor of his power, his authority, his God, and every
other worthwhile possession.5

Conversely, each religion has its proper racial adherents, and
religious faith should not cross racial lines:

Christianity is for the European (paleface); Moslemism is for the
Asiatic (olive-skinned). When each group has its own peculiar reli-
gion, there will be peace on earth.

[However], Noble Drew Ali is a kindred personage and spirit to
Confucius, Jesus, Buddha, and Zoroaster.6

In the Moors' worship services, there is none of the expres-
sive fervor one associates with the stereotype of the lower-class
Negro church. The services are subdued and quiet. All present
are expected to pay careful attention; but there are few responses
from the congregation, and even these are hardly audible. Meet-
ings begin and end with undeviating punctuality, and the members
are seated separately according to sex, Friday is considered the
Sabbath day, but meetings are held on Wednesday and Sunday
evenings as well. No baptism or communion is observed. The

Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues 55

faithful are required to pray daily at sunrise, noon and sunset,
facing Mecca with hands upraised.

Strict personal morality is a keynote of the movement's
teachings. The Moors greet their followers with the salutation
"Peace!" or "Islam!" As among the Black Muslims, great empha-
sis is placed upon the husband's responsibility as protector and
provider of his family, while women are enjoined to be good
homemakers and to obey their husbands. Divorce is discouraged.
Monogamy is the only form of marriage recognized, and marriage
ceremonies are performed by the "Grand Sheik," or Governor, in
charge of the local temple. Most secular entertainments are for-
bidden, as is the use of cosmetics, alcohol and tobacco. Meat and
eggs are taboo. Personal cleanliness is stressed, but men are not
expected to shave.

Despite the racial boisterousness of some of its adherents,
the Moorish Science movement did not consider itself "radical."
On the contrary, the Moors offered themselves as the nucleus
around which a world of truth, peace, freedom and justice must
be built. Despite their hostility to whites, they stressed obedience
and loyalty to the flag of the United States, so long as they were
to live in America. For the Moors have two homelands. Noble
Drew, the Reincarnation of Mohammed, gave them Morocco as
the seat of their Nation. But the dark people of the world are
also native to the continent of North America, which is now under
European dominion. They have no choice but to submit to the
harsh rule of the whites until the whites' time to reign comes to
an end.

A few Moorish temples remain scattered among the Negro
ghettos today. The congregations believe that they are still led
by Noble Drew Ali, with each present Sheik a reincarnation of
their revered founder. Many Moors, however, were among the
earliest converts to the Black Muslim Movement. They feel quite
at home in this new nationalism, which continues them in their
familiar "Asiatic" religion without requiring them to love the
"Europeans." In fact, they may now look forward to the pre-
dicted destruction of their enemies with increased assurance, for
Elijah Muhammad, the Messenger — unlike Noble Drew Ali — is
not a man to compromise.

56 Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues

Political Nationalism: The Garvey Movement

The name of Marcus Garvey is one of the best known in
recent Negro history, yet it is one that the Negro leadership would
like very much to forget. Few Negroes have elicited such con-
summate scorn from their fellows as did this belligerent little man,
caricatured by a contemporary as:

A Jamaican of unmixed stock, squat, stocky, fat and sleek, with pro-
truding jaws, and heavy jowls, small bright pig-like eyes and rather
bulldog-like face. Boastful, egotistic, tyrannical, intolerant, cunning,
shifty, smooth and suave, avaricious . . . gifted at self-advertisement,
without shame in self-laudation , . . without regard for veracity, a
lover of pomp and tawdry finery and garish display.7

Yet, for all the castigations of his many critics, Garvey
enjoyed the admiration of hundreds of thousands of lower-class
Negroes, who followed him with enthusiasm and money, and who
received from him a new estimate of their worth and their future.
His movement fired the imaginations of a people desperate for a
new hope and a new purpose, however unrealistic. "Its spirit of
race chauvinism had the sympathy of the overwhelming majority
of the Negro people, including those who opposed its objectives.
For this was the potent spirit of race consciousness and race pride
that informed the 'New Negro' " of the 1920s8 — a period of cul-
tural renaissance and racial militancy among the Negro intellli-
gentsia.

The Garvey movement must inevitably be seen against the
background of the post- World War I era, a crucial and difficult
time for Negroes in the United States. They had helped to win a
war for democracy overseas, only to return to the customary big-
otry at home. They had risked death fighting beside the white
man in the trenches of France, only to die in America at the white
man's hand. In the first year after the war, seventy Negroes were
lynched, many of them still hi uniform. Fourteen Negroes were
burned publicly by white citizens; eleven of these martyrs were
burned alive.9 During the "Red Summer" of 1919, there were no
fewer than twenty-five race riots across the country. A riot in the
nation's capital lasted three days; in Chicago, thirty-eight people
were killed and 537 injured during thirteen days of mob rule.10

Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues 57

Along with the actual physical violence, there was intimida-
tion everywhere. The Ku Klux Klan had been revived; and New
York, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and several New England states
had been added to its traditional roster of Southern states.11
There was an increasing competition between Negroes and whites
for housing and jobs. Despair and militancy were the alternate
moods of the Negro veterans who had fought "to make the world
safe for democracy." They were disillusioned about the share of
democracy America had reserved for them, but they were deter-
mined to bid for their rights — loud and clear.

In the summer of 1914, Marcus Garvey had returned home
to Jamaica from a visit to London, his mind seething with plans
for a new Universal Negro Improvement Association. Ironically,
his sense of mission had been triggered by a reading of Up From
Slavery, the autobiography of Booker T, Washington, who had
been despised by many Negroes for his life-pattern of compromise
and accommodation.

I read Up From Slavery . . . and then my doom ... of being a race
leader dawned upon me. ... I asked: "Where is the black man's Gov-
ernment? Where is his King and his kingdom? Where is his Presi-
dent, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of
big affairs?" I could not find them, and then I declared, "I will help
to make them."12

And he did. Putting aside Washington's reminiscences of restraint
and gratitude for white favors, he originated a movement devoted
to extreme black nationalism and self-improvement. As a result,
he came to share with Washington the bitter contempt of Negro
intellectuals — though for the opposite reason.

The manifesto of the UNIA called attention to "the uni-
versal disunity existing among the people of the Negro or African
race." It challenged "all people of Negro or African parentage"
to subscribe to the UNIA program, which read in part:

To establish a Universal Confraternity among the race; to promote the
spirit of race pride and love; to reclaim the fallen of the race ... to
strengthen the imperialism [self-determination] of independent African
States ... to establish Universities, Colleges and Secondary Schools
for the further education and culture of the boys and girls of the
race to conduct a world-wide commercial and industrial intercourse.13

58 Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues

The motto of the Association was: "One God! One Aim! One
Destiny!" — a motto which has recently been adopted by the rabid
Ras Tafarian cult, which also emanates from Jamaica.

In 1916, Marcus Garvey "came screaming out of the British
West Indies onto the American Stage."14 He landed in New
York, where at first little attention was paid to his street-corner
speeches. Undaunted, he set out to tour thirty-eight states in
order to study conditions of Negro life in America. When he
returned to New York a year later, he had formulated certain
opinions which were later to shape the largest mass movement in
the history of the American Negro. Important among these con-
clusions was the amazing discovery that the "so-called Negro
leaders . . . had no program, but were mere opportunists who
were living off their so-called leadership while the poor people
were groping in the dark."15 He seems to have concluded that
too much of the leadership was concentrated in the hands of
mulattoes and that these "part-white Negroes" could not be
trusted.16 He was exceedingly disturbed that Negro leadership
depended so heavily upon white philanthropy — an impossible
paradox. He was most contemptuous because this dependent
leadership seemed willing "to turn back the clock of progress" at
the whim of the white benefactors.

The New York division of the UNIA soon became the head-
quarters of a world- wide organization. By midsummer of 1919,
Garvey claimed to have two million members in thirty branches.17
His newspaper, The Negro World, was printed in French and
Spanish, as well as in English, at its peak, it claimed a circulation
of more than 200,000, "reaching the mass of Negroes throughout
the world." The paper devoted itself mainly to a recapitulation
and reinterpretation of the Negro's contribution to history. It
recalled "the stirring heroism of such leaders of American slave
rebellions as Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and Nat Turner.
The struggles of Zulu and Hottentot warriors against European
rule, the histories of Moorish and Ethiopian empires, and the
intrepid exploits of Toussaint L'Ouverture . . . were not neglected
in the effort to make Negroes conscious and proud of their racial
heritage."18 Readers were encouraged to speak out on racial
matters, and Garvey himself "delighted in references to the great-

Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues 59

ness of colored civilizations at a time when white men were only
barbarians and savages."19

At the First International Convention of the UNIA, held in
New York in August 1920, no fewer than twenty-five countries
were represented. A mammoth parade — led by the African
Legion, the Black Cross Nurses and other organizations of the
UNIA — wound through Harlem and on to Madison Square Gar-
den, where Garvey set the tone of the month-long convention
with an opening address to 25,000 Negroes:

We are the descendants of a suffering people; we are the descendants
of a people determined to suffer no longer. . . . We shall now organize
the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world into a vast organization to
plant the banner of freedom on the great continent of Africa. ... If
Europe is for the Europeans, then Africa shall be for the black peoples
of the world. We say it; we mean it. . . .20

Later, the UNIA delegates drafted a "Declaration of the Rights
of the Negro Peoples of the World," which was adopted on August
13, 1920. The declaration spelled out the Negro's rights in terms
of political and judicial equality, racial self-determination and an
independent Africa under a Negro government. It alleged that
the League of Nations (which had just been organized in Switzer-
land) "seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty." The League, it
said, is "null and void as far as the Negro is concerned."

The convention also approved a flag for the movement:
"red for the blood of the race, nobly shed in the past and dedicated
to the future; black to symbolize pride in the color of its skin;
and green for the promise of a new and better life in Africa."21
An order of nobility was created; honorary orders were estab-
lished; salaries were voted for the leadership; and Garvey was
elected Provisional President of the African Republic. Gabriel
Johnson, mayor of Monrovia, capital of the free African Republic
of Liberia, was named secretary of state in the Provisional Cabinet
at a salary of $12,000 a year. So impressed was Johnson that, on
his return home, he announced that his office in Garvey's Pro-
visional Government gave him diplomatic precedence over the
President of Liberia.

When the convention ended, the Garvey movement had
attained world significance. " 'Up, you mighty race,' Garvey

60 Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues

thundered, 'you can accomplish what you will,' and the Negro
people responded with an enthusiastic determination born of cen-
turies of frustration and despair."22 They poured a million dollars
into the UNIA's Black Star Steamship Line — organized to link
the black peoples of the world in commerce and trade, and to
transport America's black millions back to their African "home."
They gloried in the cooperative possession of grocery stores, laun-
dries, restaurants and hotels. They took an unconcealed pride in
staffing the Universal Black Cross Nurses, the Universal African
Motor Corps, the Black Eagle Flying Corps and other UNIA
auxiliaries with "Black men and women." An unarmed but
smartly uniformed Universal African Legion paraded spectacu-
larly through the streets of Harlem, and the admiring Negroes
massed along the route whispered knowingly about the liberation
of Africa by force of arms. Uncritical Negroes everywhere, and
especially the despairing millions in the crowded slums of black
America, acclaimed Garvey as the true leader of a new race.

Garvey's political ambitions were never made wholly ex-
plicit. The Ku Klux Klan and the fanatical Anglo-Saxon Clubs of
that era assumed that he intended to lead all the Negroes in
America to Africa; for this reason, they gave him their open sup-
port. But Garvey declared, "We do not want all the Negroes [to
settle] in Africa. Some are no good here, and naturally will be
no good there."23 His real intentions seem to have been not unlike
those of modern Zionism. He wanted to build a state, somewhere
in Africa, to which Negroes would come from all over the world,
bringing with them a wealth of technical and professional skills.
Within a few years, he hoped, the new state would gain such
prestige and power that it would be recognized as a symbol of
accomplishment and protection for Negroes all over the world.
For Garvey was convinced, as is Elijah Muhammad, that the
Negro can hope for neither peace nor dignity while he lives in a
white society. Like Muhammad, he saw only one solution: the
establishment of a separate nation "so strong as to strike fear"
into the hearts of the oppressor white race.24

But, unlike the Zionists, Garvey did not rest his ambitions
here. The eventual liberation of all Africa was never far from
his thinking. Presumably his black state, when it became suffi-

Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues 61

ciently powerful, would begin a revolution that would free all
Africa, for he spoke mysteriously of the hour of "Africa's Re-
demption": "It is in the wind. It is coming. One day, like a
storm, it will be here." He told a white audience that "you will
find ten years from now, or 100 years from now, Garvey was not
an idle buffoon but was representing the new vision of the
Negro. . . ." In what was perhaps a prophetic warning, he de-
clared: "We say to the white man who now dominates Africa that
it is to his interest to clear out of Africa now, because we are
coming . . . 400,000,000 strong." And again, "We shall not ask
England or France or Italy or Belgium, 'Why are you here?' We
shall only command them, 'Get out of here.' "25

Garvey's beachhead on the African continent was to be
Liberia, the little country founded on the west coast by American
slaves in 1847. The Liberian government had promised to "afford
the association every facility legally possible in effectuating in
Liberia its industrial, agricultural, and business projects." Speci-
fied settlements were laid out by the Liberian government and
set aside for colonization, but Liberia's Acting President Edwin
Barclay felt it necessary to warn Garvey that "the British and
French have enquired. . . . But it is not always advisable nor
politic to openly expose our secret intentions. . . . We don't tell
them what we think; we only tell them what we like them to hear
— what, in fact, they like to hear."26

Garvey's movement was essentially political and social; he
did not rest his doctrines and program upon any religious premise.
Yet he did not neglect the wellspring of religious fervor — and
discontent — in the Negro community. Then as now, many Ne-
groes resented the white man's presumption in depicting God and
Jesus as Caucasians, in filling the Christian churches and Bibles
with pictures of a white God, a white Savior and an all-white
heavenly host. Garvey seized on this resentment and carried it to
a logical extreme. Since whatever is white cannot be beneficial to
the black man, he pointed out, a white God cannot be the God of
the Negro people. This was the God of the white man. The
Negro's God must be black.

To promulgate a black religion, Garvey named as Chaplain
General of the UNIA a former Episcopal rector, the Reverend

62 Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues

George Alexander McGuire. In the Episcopalian fold, Bishop
McGuire had long been a nettlesome critic, first agitating in vain
for independent status for the Negro congregations, then organiz-
ing an Independent Episcopalian Church. This group followed
him into the Garveyite movement and became the nucleus of a
new, UNIA-sponsored African Orthodox Church. In his new
position, McGuire was ordained a bishop by Archbishop Vilatte
of the Syrian Orthodox Church,27 thus bringing to the African
Orthodox Church direct apostolic succession from one of the
oldest bodies in Christendom.

Under Garvey's aegis, Bishop McGuire set out to re-order
the religious thinking of the vast membership of the UNIA. He
established a cathedral and a seminary (named Endich, after an
alleged Ethiopian mentioned in the New Testament) for the train-
ing of a new order of black priests. The liturgy, based on the
Episcopalian ritual, was colorful and impressive. And the new
church set high moral demands, seeking "to be true to the prin-
ciples of Christianity without the shameful hypocrisy of the white
churches."28 But the church was distinguished primarily by its
appeal to race consciousness. "Forget the white gods," the bishop
demanded. "Erase the white gods from your hearts." By 1924,
after four years of his ministry, the Black Madonna and Child
had become a standard picture in the homes of the faithful, and
the worship of a Black Christ was openly advocated.

In August 1924, at the fourth annual convention of the
UNIA, Bishop McGuire issued a public appeal to Negroes "to
name the day when all members of the race would tear down and
burn any pictures of the white Madonna and the white Christ
found in their homes."29 The Negro clergy was loud in protest,
and the Negro press derided the idea of a "black Jesus." But the
African Orthodox Church had long since spread its missions
through several states and into Canada, Cuba and Haiti. On both
fronts, religious and political, Garvey's black nationalism was
riding high.

From the start, however, Garvey had not been without his
troubles. His movement had been kept under constant surveillance
by New York State Assistant District Attorney Edwin P. Kilroe,
whose interest bordered on harassment. The federal government

Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues 63

was hardly sympathetic to Garvey's international ambitions; and
abroad, the various colonial governments viewed him with out-
right alarm. His newspaper — in its English, French and Spanish
editions — had been quickly suppressed throughout the colonial
world. In America the newspaper was among several Negro
organs cited by the U. S. Department of Justice in a 1919 report
on alleged radicalism and sedition among American Negroes. The
following year the Lusk Committee, investigating sedition in New
York State, cited the Negro World as one of the most radical ele-
ments of the New Negro press. Both the committee and the De-
partment of Justice portrayed Garvey as a dangerous agitator,
inimical to the interests of his own people and of the country as
a whole; but neither group was able to substantiate its charges.

Meanwhile, the governments of Great Britain and France
became increasingly alarmed over the implications of the Garvey
movement and spared no effort to keep it out of Africa — even to
the extent of bringing indirect pressure to bear on the Republic
of Liberia, which had agreed to provide for the settlement of
about a hundred thousand Garvey followers in that country. The
UNIA had been enthusiastically welcomed there, and the mayor
of Monrovia had accepted a post as secretary of state in Garvey's
provisional government. Garvey sent several missions to Liberia,
one as late as June 1924, to prepare for the settlement of his
followers, who were scheduled to begin arriving in October 1924.

In the summer of 1924, the pressure from the British and
French (who governed the territories surrounding Liberia) took
effect. The Liberian government, under President Charles D. B.
King, sent a diplomatic note to the United States announcing that
it was "irrevocably opposed both in principle and fact to the in-
cendiary policy of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,
headed by Marcus Garvey." The lands promised to Garvey were
leased instead to the Firestone Rubber Corporation, and when the
new Garvey mission arrived, the members were arrested for im-
mediate deportation. Thereupon, the Liberian president was
lionized by the British for his "courage and statesmanship." The
British press hailed him for putting "his foot down very firmly on
such misguided movements for the people of his own race, as that
sponsored ... by Marcus Garvey and other agitators." The

64 Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues

French government made him a Chevalier of the French Legion
of Honor.30

At home, Garvey was encountering increasing resistance
within the Negro community. The emerging black bourgeoisie
and the Negro intellectuals would have no part of him.3L Their
attempt to mold the public image of Negroes as an intelligent,
sophisticated people was undermined by his constant harangues
and the spectacle of thousands of his followers parading in flam-
boyant uniforms through the streets of New York City. At first
they simply ignored his movement; but as its notoriety increased,
it drew the fire of most of the well-known Negro leaders, including
A. Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen and W. E. B. DuBois.
DuBois criticized the UNIA as "bombastic and impractical,"
although he later admitted that competition from Garvey had
greatly hampered the development of his own Pan-African Con-
gresses.32 The NAACP also criticized Garvey's movement, as did
the National Urban League.

Nor did Garvey spare his critics. He characterized such
leaders as DuBois, James Weldon Johnson and Eugene Kinkle
Jones as "weak-kneed and cringing . . . sycophant to the white
man." He warned that "the 'Uncle Tom' Negroes must give way
to the 'New Negro,' who is seeking his place in the sun." 33

Thus Garvey's troubles closed down upon him. His own
lack of business acumen had kept him embroiled in legal wrangles
over the Black Star Line and other commercial ventures of the
UNIA,34 Now the apprehensions of the ruling powers on three
continents were joined with those of America's conservative Negro
leadership in a demand that the dangerous little Jamaican be cut
down to size. The Messenger magazine, edited by Chandler Owen
and A. Philip Randolph, led the Negro intellectuals in a direct
attack. "Garvey must go!" became the rallying cry of many indi-
viduals who could agree on no other single issue.

Early in 1922, at the urging of the Negro press, Garvey had
been indicted for using the mails to defraud in the promotion of
stock in the UNIA's Black Star Steamship Line. But the govern-
ment's case was weak, and the federal authorities made no move
to prosecute. In January 1923, however, the calm was shattered
by the murder of James W. H. Eason, an early Garvey admirer

Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues OD

who had split with the movement the previous year and was now
rumored to have offered himself as a key prosectuion witness in
the mail-fraud case. There was no evidence linking Garvey or the
UNIA to the crime, which remains unsolved, but the hostility of
the responsible Negro leadership was whetted. Less than a week
after the murder, a "Committee of Eight" — all prominent Ameri-
can Negroes, most of them active in the NAACP — sent an open
letter to the U. S. Attorney General. The letter condemned Gar-
veyism as a philosophy seeking "to arouse ill-feeling between the
races" and urged that he "use his full influence completely to dis-
band and extirpate the vicious movement, and that he vigorously
and speedily push the government's case against Marcus Garvey
for using the mails to defraud."35

Garvey responded with a bitter denunciation of the "good
old darkies" who had treacherously sought to curry favor with the
white man at the expense of their "fellow Negroes whose only
crime has been that of making an effort to improve the condition
of the race."36 But in May the government brought the case to
trial and won a conviction. Garvey was fined and sentenced to
imprisonment for the maximum term of five years. He remained
at liberty for seventeen months while his lawyers vainly appealed
the decision, but in February 1925 he was taken to the federal
penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia. In December 1927 his sentence
was commuted by President Coolidge; but Garvey had never be-
come an American citizen, and since he had been convicted of a
felony, the law required that he be immediately deported. From
abroad he labored hard to keep his movement in the United
States alive, but it quickly faded, and his death in London in
1940 was scarcely mentioned in the American press.

Garveyism is not dead. William L. Sherrill, once Garvey's
representative to the League of Nations, still maintains UNIA
headquarters in Detroit and serves as president of the straggling
movement. The African Orthodox Church also survives, but its
membership has dwindled to less than seven thousand. Various
nationalistic cults in America, Africa and Jamaica still celebrate
"Garvey Day" each August 1 with appropriate speeches and cere-
mony. And Garvey's own stature continues to grow as more and
more observers concede that, for all his faults, he had a profound

66 Black Nationalism: The Minor Leagues

awakening effect on the American Negro community. Yet Gar-
veyism lives on not really as a movement but as a symbol — a
symbol of the militant Negro nationalism which so many black
Americans see as their only alternative to eternal frustration and
despair.

Preparing the Way for Allah

By the late 1920s, then, Noble Drew All was dead and
Marcus Garvey deported. Their movements, shorn of their char-
ismatic leadership, were in rapid decline. But there was no change
in the experience that gave rise to both movements — the experi-
ence of being black among a white majority. This condition was,
if anything, more intolerable than ever, for the Negro masses had
been vividly reminded of their human dignity and their proud
racial heritage. The failure of the Moorish and Garveyite move-
ments left in the Negro lower class a constrained silence, a vacuum
of extremist protest against racial indignities that were soon to be
aggravated by the tensions of the Depression. Either America had
to come quickly to its senses and live up to its democratic ideals,
or a new black nationalist movement would move in to fill that
vacuum.

It was just at this time, in the summer of 1930, that Wallace
D. Fard appeared in Detroit. Many of those who first came under
his spell had been followers of Garvey or Noble Drew. Fard was
not alone, of course, in seeking to win over the masses already
conditioned to black nationalism, especially those who had flocked
to the black, green and crimson banner of the UNIA. Other
black nationalist groups were also active, among them the National
Movement for the Establishment of a Forty-Ninth State, the
National Union of People of African Descent, the Peace Move-
ment of Ethiopia and the United African Nationalist Movement.
But none of these groups had a leader with Fard's charisma or
his ability to seize on the Moorish and Garveyite passions and
transform them into a new force, in which religious and political
energies were fused. Fard's movement was destined to become
the vanguard of black nationalism and, by solving the problem of
succession on which earlier movements had foundered, to give
that ancient ambition a fresh permanence and power.

4 The Faith and the Future

The Black Muslims have learned much from Marcus Garvey
and Noble Drew Ali. Like those earlier prophets of black nation-
alism, they capitalize on the lower-class Negro's despair and
yearning, and they have developed his race consciousness and his
hatred of the white man into a black confession of faith. The
Black Man, they teach, has a manifest destiny, and the white man
is the personification of the evil that separates the Black Man
from his freedom, his moral development and his God. In such
a confession, the Moors, the Garveyites and most of the other cults
of black nationalism are able to find satisfactory expression. It
matters little whether the homeland of the dispersed Black Nation
is said to be Asia or Africa. For the black nationalist, Afro-Asia
is a single continent, and the Black Man's Zion is where the white
man is not.

In elaborating their doctrines, the Black Muslims have
achieved what seems to be a paradox: a rigorously high moral
standard of personal and group behavior, laced with a consuming
and potentially violent racial and religious hatred. For the Mus-
lims, however, this is no paradox. They urge "peace among
brothers" but point out that the white man, having scorned
brotherhood with non-whites, "can only be a brother to himself."
They urge submission to all authority except to the authority of
the white man, which, they assert, is not legitimate but is simply
"imposed by force and maintained by intimidation." The Mus-
lims' social morality is, in short, an in-group morality. They find
no mandate, except that of temporary expediency, for peace and
submission between whites and blacks. And from this point of
view, it is the religion of the Negro Christian that appears as a
paradox, if not an outright hypocrisy or madness. For "it is not
possible," says Muhammad's chief spokesman, Malcolm X, "for
you to love a man whose chief purpose in life is to humiliate you
and still be what is considered a normal human being."

68 The Faith and the Future

I. DOCTRINES AND MYTHOLOGY

Mythologies — and the doctrines they support — are found as
the organizing principles of all mass movements, religious and
secular. They hold the central position in the most venerable
religions and the most specious cults, in social movements as dis-
parate as Fascism and the Townsend Plan, in cultural attitudes
ranging from white or black supremacy to the American Creed.

By their very nature, myths are outside the realm of the
"true" or the "untrue." They are subject neither to the rules of
logic nor to the techniques of scientific investigation. A "re-
ligious" myth, in particular, claims for itself an immunity which
is not granted to any other kind of information upon whose
authority people commit themselves to action.

Like every other mass movement, the Black Muslims have
developed for themselves a unique body of myths and doctrines.1
Much of this material is elaborative and peripheral. Several major
themes, however, are stressed by the Muslims, both in their publi-
cations and in their public lectures.

The Plight of the So-Called Negroes

Like all other black nationalists, the Muslims do not con-
sider themselves "Negroes." They resent and reject the word and
its implications: it is no more than "a label the white man placed
on us to make his discrimination more convenient." For this
reason, they rarely use the word "Negro" without the qualifier
"so-called."

The Muslims prefer to be called "Black Men." Malcolm X
explains:

If you call yourself "white," why should I not call myself "black"?
Because you have taught me that I am a "Negro"! Now then, if you
ask a man his nationality and he says he is German, that means he
comes from a nation called Germany. If he says his nationality is
French, that means he came from a nation called France. The term
he uses to identify himself connects him with a nation, a language,
a culture and a flag. Now if he says his nationality is "Negro" he has
told you nothing — except possibly that he is not good enough to be
"American." ... If Frenchmen are of France and Germans are of
Germany, where is "Negroland"? Ill tell you: it's in the mind of

The Faith and the Future 69

the white man! . . . You don't call Minnie Minoso a "Negro," and
he's blacker than I am. You call him a Cuban! Nkrumah is an Afri-
can— a Ghanaian — you don't call him a "Negro." . . . No matter how
light or dark a white man is, he's "white." Same way with us. No
matter how light or how dark we are, we call ourselves "black" —
different shades of black, and we don't feel we have to make apologies
about it!2

America's so-called Negroes, say the Muslims, have been
kept in mental slavery by the white man, even while their bodies
were free. They have been systematically and diabolically
estranged from their heritage and from themselves. "They have
been educated in ignorance," kept from any knowledge of their
origin, history, true names or religion. Reduced to helplessness
under the domination of the whites, they are now so lost that
they even seek friendship and acceptance from their mortal ene-
mies, rather than from their own people. They are shackled with
the names of the Slavemasters; they are duped by the Slavemas-
ter's religion; they are divided and have no language, flag or
country of their own. Yet they do not even know enough to be
ashamed.

The most unforgivable offense of these so-called Negroes is
that they "are guilty of loving the white race and all that that race
goes for ... [for] the white race [is] their arch deceiver." Mal-
colm X sums up the result of centuries of indoctrination by the
white man:

As "Negro Christians" we idolized our Christian Slavemaster, and
lived for the day when his plurality of white gods would allow us to
mingle and mix up with them. We worshipped the false beauty of the
Slavemaster's leprous looking women. . . . We regarded them with
the utmost respect, courtesy and kindness, bowing, and tipping our
hats, showing our teeth. We perfected the art of humility and polite-
ness for their sake . . . but at the same time we treated our own
women as if they were mere animals, with no love, respect or pro-
tection. . . .

We were supposed to be a part of the "Christian Church," yet we
lived in a bitter world of dejection . . . being rejected by the white
"Christian Church." In large numbers we became victims of drunken-
ness, drug addiction, reefer smoking ... in a false and futile attempt

70 The Faith and the Future

to "escape" the reality and horror of the shameful condition that the
Slavemaster's Christian religion had placed us in.

Fear ruled us, but not fear of God. We had fear of the Slavemaster,
we had no knowledge of truth and we were apparently afraid to let
him see us practicing love and unity towards each other.

Is it a wonder that the world laughed at us and held us [up] to scorn?
We practiced love of others, while hating ourselves . . . patience with
others and impatience with our own kind . . . unity with others and
disunity with our own kind. We called ourselves "Negro Christians,"
yet we remained an ignorant, foolish people, despised and REJECTED
by the white Christians. We were fools!3

America's so-called Negroes are the "Lost Nation of Islam
in North America." They have now been found, and a Messenger
has been sent to prepare them for their day of destiny, for "the
judgment of the world has arrived and the gathering together of
the people is now going on."4 The Lost Nation has been as the
beggar Lazarus, "the one who was so charmed over the wealth
and food of the rich man that he couldn't leave his gate to seek
some for himself."5 But Allah has now found his people, and
they must hasten to rise up and be men among men, lest they
further disgrace themselves and their God.

The so-called Negroes must be willing to work and to suffer.
They must first seek unity among themselves "... and then the
friendship of others (if there is any friendship in others)." But
they must never relent in their striving for a place in the sun:

We must have for our peace and happiness that which other nations
have. Allah desires to make the Black Nation the equal or superior
of the white race.6

If necessary, they must be willing to die for dignity and justice,
but they need fear nothing if they will believe in Allah and follow
his Messenger.7 They must never be aggressors, but "it is a Divine
Law for us to defend ourselves if attacked."8 Indeed, if Jesus had
permitted Peter and his other disciples to use the sword on the
Jews, Jesus might have been more successful in his work. "For
it was the sword that put him to death and the Jews remained
unbelievers."9

The Faith and the Future 71

The so-called Negroes are "sacred vessels of the Temple of
God"; but "America has poured wine into those sacred vessels,"
corrupting them, and they will now "have to be chastised into the
knowledge of Allah, the God of their Salvation." They have been
"absolutely deaf, dumb and blind — brainwashed of all self-respect
and knowledge of kind by the white Slavemaster." They are now
little more than "free slaves," with no land of their own, no justice
in the white man's courts, no vote at the white man's polls and
no voice in the councils whose edicts they must accept. Yet, led
by the Negro clergy, they continue to love their oppressors, while
the whites "make fools and Uncle Toms out of our educated pro-
fessional class of people with a false show of social equality."10

"The white man is never going to grant the Negro equal
opportunity," says Minister Louis X of Boston, "for the white
man knows that the Black Man is by nature a leader. Granted
equality, he will automatically assume leadership. Since the white
man knows this, he grants symbolic status to a few Uncle Toms
and keeps the rest of us available for exploitation."

The Negro in America is "sick," the Muslims say. He has
been poisoned to death's door by the spurious teachings of the
white man. But the white man is sicker: he has been fatally
drugged by his own ego. The white man will never recover, for
"he is just like a man on dope. If he kicks it, he'll die, and if he
doesn't kick it, it'll kill him." The teachings of Elijah Muhammad
are "specifically aimed at those suffering from a particular illness
we all know about." They are "designed to rectify the ills of the
Black Man in the West."

The Muslim leadership particularly condemns the Negro
who, having gained a limited acceptance in the white world, dis-
sociates himself from the Negro masses. Of such a man Malcolm
X declares:

No matter how much education he has, everyday things keep remind-
ing him. . . . Makes no difference what he is or how great he is. If
he is a physicist, he is a Negro physicist. If he is a baseball player,
he is a Negro baseball player. It's the same if he is in Massachusetts
or Mississippi, he can't escape the stigma the white man has saddled
him with. . . . They say that only the people who have been tramped
upon become Muslims. Well, in that case we should be twenty mil-
lion strong because there isn't a Negro in America who hasn't been

72 The Faith and the Future

tramped upon! Some are just too busy licking the boots that tramped
over them to realize what is taking place.11

Negro moderates — those who undertake to defend whites who
have shown some liberality in their views — come in for a similar
upbraiding:

You have a situation where Negroes are too quick to jump up and
shout about what the good white people are doing for them. Well,
if Jesse James robbed a bank and his sons came along later and
scattered a few coins before the depositors who lost everything they
had, some people would want to build a monument to the James
boys! ... So this Negro, he gets elated. He thinks he's making
progress when all the time he's catching more hell than any black
man on the face of the earth.12

The Negro's plight was forced upon him by the white man,
but it persists because the Negro has been willing to remain "in a
land not his own." It can only be solved by separation. So long
as Negroes live among whites, they will be subject to the white
man's abuse of power — economic and political. Separation will
provide the only realistic opportunity for mutual respect between
the races.

But the Muslims are hardly planning to abandon the country
to the white man. They emphasize that the white man's home is
in Europe and that justice requires a separate "Black Nation here
hi America," built on "some of the land our fathers and mothers
paid for in 300 years of slavery . . . right here in America."
Marcus Garvey wanted to found a Black Nation in Africa. Elijah
Muhammad thinks America will do.

The Coming of Allah

The so-called Negroes are ignorant and servile, and the be-
havior they have copied from the white man is shameful. Yet
they remain sacred to Allah, who has promised to rescue them
from their oppressors. Allah's coming had been predicted for
six thousand years, ever since the white race began; at his coming,
the white race was to reach its end. "America," says Muhammad,
"is the place where Allah will make himself felt."

Allah's incarnation was, of course, the stranger in Detroit,

The Faith and the Future 73

who "came from Arabia in 1930" and "used the name of Wallace
D. Fard, often signing it W. D. Fard. In the third year (1933) he
signed his name 'W. F. Muhammad,' which stands for Wallace
Fard Muhammad. He came alone."13

Elijah Muhammad, the Messenger, proclaims his own inti-
macy with Allah — "I know Allah and I am with him" — but he
never presumes to Allah's supreme status. Allah alone is the
"Author of Islam," and "it is a perfect insult to Allah" to worship
anyone other than him. Allah has found his people and will soon
punish the white Slavemasters for the evil they have done. The
period of bondage is ended, and "hell is kindling up."

Allah is not, however, a godhead complete in himself. All
Black Men represent Allah, or at least participate in him, for all
Black Men are divine. A strong Platonic idealism permeates the
Black Muslim concept of Allah: Pure Black is equivalent to
Absolute Perfection. Again and again the thesis is sounded that
Black is the primogenitor of all that exists. All colors are but
shades of black; white is but the absence of color; hence the white
man is incomplete and imperfect. All things that are, are made
by man; and only Black Man is truly wise and creative.

Allah is a Black Man, not a spirit or "spook." He is the
Supreme Black Man, the Supreme Being among a mighty nation
of divine Black Men. This sharp difference from the Christian
concept of God was made clear during a television interview of
the Muslim leader in 1959.

Mr. Lomax: Now if I have understood your teachings correctly, you

teach that all of the members of Islam are God, and that one among

you is supreme, and that that one is Allah. Now have I understood

you correctly?

Mr. Elijah Muhammad: That's right.

Mr. Lomax: Now, you have on the other hand said that the devil is

the white man — that the white man is a doomed race.

Mr. Elijah Muhammad: Yes.

Mr. Lomax: Am I correct there, sir?

Mr. Elijah Muhammad: Yes.14

It is Allah who exposed the white man: "He gave us infor-
mation as to the exact birth of the white race and the name of
their God who made them, and how, and the end of their time.

74 The Faith and the Future

... He taught us the truth of how we were made slaves, and how
we are kept in slavery by the slavemaster's children." He taught
his people to avoid unclean foods, especially pork; and he in-
structed them in science and astronomy, the civilizations on other
planets and the knowledge of self. He taught them the history of
the two nations — the black and the white — which dominate the
earth and "declared the doom of America for her evils to [Black
Men]." That doom is already "past due, and she is number one
to be destroyed."15

Allah is not unforgiving, and the sins the Lost Nation com-
mitted in following and obeying the Slavemasters are not held
against them // they return to their own kind. Allah's greatest
teaching is "Be Yourself." He demands that "we must give up our
slave names . . . give up all evil doings and practices and do only
righteousness or we shall be destroyed from the face of the earth."
Of those who submit, Allah will make a "new people" who will
participate in "unlimited progress."

The coming of Allah signifies the beginning of justice for the
Black Man. Allah came to expose the "great enemy of justice and
righteousness" before all the world. His very coming is a judg-
ment upon the behavior of those in power. "If justice had pre-
vailed, there would be no judgment," but the Slavemaster's yoke
grows even more oppressive:

With all of your blood . . . given to help keep America for white
Americans, you return to meet lawlessness and injustice. You are
beaten, raped, lynched, burned . . . and denied justice by the gov-
ernment [which is] defended with [your] life's blood. . . . White
lynchers and rapers of our people are judged innocent. . . . You con-
tinue like sheep among wolves to go on suffering . . . the government
makes it clear to you that it is no defense for us against injustice. . . .
The only alternative left is to unite as one on the side of Allah . . .
"Fight with those who fight against you," (Holy Quran). "An eye
for an eye" (Bible), and fight every injustice against us with every
drop of blood that is in us.16

Because of the injustices of the Caucasians, "Allah has not come
to bring about love and peace between us and the devils, but
rather to separate . . . [us] from our open enemies."17 Allah has
further come to bring the "right religion in the right state." He
has made it known that Jesus "was only a prophet and not the

The Faith and the Future 75

equal of Moses and Muhammad, and that his [Jesus'] religion
was Islam, and not the Christianity of the Pope of Rome."18

The Original Man

The Original Man is, by declaration of Allah himself, "none
other than Black Man." Black Man is the first and last: creator
of the universe and the primogenitor of all other races — including
the white race, for which Black Man used "a special method of
birth control." White man's history is only six thousand years
long, but Black Man's is coextensive with the creation of the earth.
Original Man includes all non-white people, and his primogeniture
is undeniable: "everywhere the white race has gone on our planet
they have found the Original Man or a sign that he has been there
previously."19

The so-called Negro in America is a blood-descendant of the
Original Man. "Who is better knowing of whom we are than God
Himself? He has declared that we are descendants of the Asian
Black Nation and of the tribe of Shabazz,"20 which "came with
the earth" when a great explosion divided the earth and the moon
"sixty-six trillion years ago." The tribe of Shabazz was first to
explore the planet and discover the choicest places in which to
live, including the Nile Valley and the area which was to become
the Holy City of Mecca in Arabia.

All so-called Negroes are Muslims, whether they know it or
not. It is the task of Elijah Muhammad and his followers to teach
the so-called Negroes that they are of the tribe of Shabazz and,
therefore, "Original." Once they understand this, they will know
themselves to be Muslims, heart and soul. Christ himself was a
Muslim prophet, and several of his parables refer to the so-called
Negroes, especially those of the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son and
the Raising of Lazarus. The so-called Negroes are good people
and religiously inclined by nature. In fact, "the Black Man by
nature is divine."21

When the whole world knows who the Original Man is — and
only then — wars will cease, for everything depends upon knowing
who is the rightful owner of the earth. Lest there be any possible

76 The Faith and the Future

confusion, Muhammad addresses himself specifically to the ques-
tion:

The Original Man, Allah has declared, is none other than the Black
Man. He is the first and the last, and maker and owner of the uni-
verse; from him come all — brown, yellow, red, and white. . . . The
true knowledge of black and white should be enough to awaken the
so-called Negroes . . . [and] put them on their feet and on the road
to self-independence.22

To know the identity of the Original Man is of crucial importance,
for the time of "judgment" is approaching and "Allah is now
pointing out to the nations of the earth their rightful places."

The White Man and Christianity

It would be difficult, probably impossible, to separate the
Black Muslim teachings on Christianity from those on race. A
fundamental tenet of the sect is that all Black Men are Muslims
by nature and that Christianity is a white man's religion. Thus
there is not even a possibility of awakened Black Men accepting
Christianity. Nor can the white man accept Islam as taught by
Muhammad, for the white man is a devil by nature: "Out of the
weak of the Black Nation, the present Caucasian race was cre-
ated."

The "originality" of the Black Nation and the creation of
the white race by Yakub, "a black scientist in rebellion against
Allah" — this is the central myth of the Black Muslim Movement.
It is the fundamental premise upon which rests the whole theory
of black supremacy and white degradation. Muhammad explains
in patient detail:

Who are the white race? I have repeatedly answered that question
in this [column] for nearly the past three years. "Why are they
white-skinned?" Answer: Allah (God) said this is due to being
grafted from the Original Black Nation, as the Black Man has two
germs (two people) in him. One is black and the other brown. The
brown germ is weaker than the black germ. The brown germ can be
grafted into its last stage, and the last stage is white. A scientist by
the name of Yakub discovered this knowledge . . . 6,645 years ago,
and was successful in doing this job of grafting after 600 years of fol-
lowing a strict and rigid birth control law.23

The Faith and the Future 77

This experiment in human hybridization was a brilliant sci-
entific accomplishment, but it had one unfortunate side effect. It
peopled the world with "blue-eyed devils," who were of compara-
tively low physical and moral stamina — a reflection of their polar
distance from the divine black. Hence white athletes are notori-
ously poor competitors against black athletes, nor should one
wonder at the wholesale atrocities committed by the "civilized"
whites. Only the white man could herd millions of his fellows into
the gas chambers, set off atomic bombs and run special trains to
a lynching at which the women and children are served cokes and
ice cream.

In grafting out his creatures' color, Yakub grafted out their
very humanity.

The human beast — the serpent, the dragon, the devil, and Satan — all
mean one and the same; the people or race known as the white or
Caucasian race, sometimes called the European race.24

Since by nature they were created liars and murderers, they are the
enemies of truth and righteousness, and the enemies of those who
seek the truth. . . ,25

These devils were given six thousand years to rule. The
allotted span of their rule was ended in 1914, and their "years
of grace" will last no longer than is necessary for the chosen of
Allah to be resurrected from the mental death imposed upon
them by the white man. This resurrection is the task of Muham-
mad himself, Messenger of Allah and Spiritual Leader of the
Lost-Found Nation in the West. The period of grace was seventy
years; forty-six have already elapsed.

During their reign, the devils have "deceived the black
nations of the earth, trapped and murdered them by the hundreds
of thousands, divided and put black against black, corrupted and
committed fornication before your very eyes with your women
. . . [and then made] you confess that you love them. . . ,"26

Four hundred years ago, the white Christians stole the Black
Muslims away from their homes and brought them to North
America, where the whites were already hi the process of system-
atic genocide against the Indian. The whites enslaved the blacks
and ensured their bondage by robbing them of their names (iden-

78 The Faith and the Future

tity), language (cultural continuity) and religion (protection of
their God). By robbing them of their true names, the whites both
shamed them and effectively "hid" them from their own kind.
By making the Black Men accept European names, the whites
branded them as property. By requiring them to speak English
rather than their native Arabic, the whites cut their slaves off from
their cultural heritage and the knowledge of self which is essential
to dignity and freedom. Such were the secular bonds of servitude.
But the Christian religion was and is the master stratagem
for keeping the so-called Negro enslaved. The whites gave him
the "poisoned book" and required him to join the "slave religion,"
which teaches him to love his oppressor and to pray for them who
persecute him. It even teaches him that it is God's will that he be
the white man's slave! There is, of course, some truth in the
Bible, but it is tangled in the white men's contradictions, for "from
the first day [they] received the Divine Scripture they started
tampering with its truth to make it to suit themselves. . . ." 27

The Bible is the graveyard of my poor people. . . .

. . . and here I quote another poison addiction of the slavery teaching
of the Bible: "Love your enemies, bless them who curse you; pray for
those who spitefully use you; him that smiteth thee on one cheek offer
the other cheek; him that (robs) taketh away the cloak, forbid not to
take (away) thy coat also." . . . The Slavemasters couldn't have
found a better teaching for their protection. . . ,28

The Bible is also held in some suspicion because "it is dedi-
cated to King James (a white man) rather than to God." More-
over, "it makes God guilty of an act of adultery by charging Him
with being the father of Mary's baby; again it charges Noah and
Lot with drunkenness and Lot begetting children by his daughter.
What a poison book!"29 On the whole, "Christianity is a religion
organized and backed by the devils for the purpose of making
slaves of black mankind."30 It "has caused more bloodshed than
any other combination of religions. Its sword is never sheathed."31

Islam sent several prophets, including Moses and Jesus, to
offer Islam to the white men as a religion of brotherhood. But
the white man could not accept it, for the white race is evil by
nature and cannot love anyone who is not white. "They are

The Faith and the Future 79

ashamed to even call you a brother or sister in their religion, and
their very nature rebels against recognizing you!"32

They cannot be trusted. The Caucasians are great deceivers. Their
nature is against friendship with black people, although they often
fool the black people . . . claiming that they are sincere friends. . . ,33

And: Do not "sweetheart" with white people, your open enemies,
for their "sweethearting" with you is not sincere. . . ,34

The black Christian preacher is the white man's most effec-
tive tool for keeping the so-called Negroes pacified and controlled,
for he tells convincing lies against nature as well as against God.
Throughout nature, God has made provision for every creature
to protect itself against its enemies; but the black preacher has
taught his people to stand still and turn the other cheek. He urges
them to fight on foreign battlefields to save the white man from
his enemies; but once home again, they must no longer be men.
Instead, they must patiently present themselves to be murdered
by those they have saved.

Even the Christian God hates his enemies and works to
destroy them. This is recorded in the Christian Bible, which all
Christians say they accept. "But the black clergy, in trying to
ingratiate itself with the whites, will deliver their people up whole-
sale."35 Thus, in an unholy and unnatural way, the "Negro
clergy class is the white man's right hand over the so-called
Negroes,"36 and the black preacher is the greatest hindrance to
their progress and equality.

The so-called Negro clergy, say the Muslims, prostitute
themselves to the downtown whites in return for "whatever per-
sonal recognition they can get above their followers. North or
South it's the same. If a white preacher exchanges pulpits with
a so-called Negro minister once a year on Brotherhood Sunday,
the black preacher tells his people the millennium is here." And
as for their heroics during the recent "sit-ins" staged by Negro
students in the South, the black preachers' tactic was simply to
"put the children out to expose themselves to the brutality of the
uncivilized whites, then . . . rush in and 'lead' after the fight is
over." In substantiation, the Muslims cite the following article
which appeared in a well-known Negro newspaper:

80 The Faith and the Future

A shameful display of cowardice and ingratitude was shown last week
by certain members of the local clergy. . . . The members took credit
for the desegregation of five lunch counters. They neglected to give
credit to the students, the persons really responsible. . . . Not one of
the ministers sat-in [in] any of the department stores. . . . Brave and
persistent activity by the students . . . caused the five lunch counters
to be integrated. [But] the ministers, on top secret invitation from
the store managers crept downtown to "negotiate." In this, they
helped the store ignore the students. Now, after all the hard, danger-
ous work [had] been done, the ministers have stolen credit for the
students' successful work.37

The reprehensible behavior of the so-called Negro preachers
stems primarily from their desire to be acceptable to the white
churches and other religious organizations. Hence the black
preacher is far more zealous about adhering to what he has been
told are Christian principles than is the white man. The white man
does not believe in trying to perfect himself morally, but he wants
the Negro to be "past-perfect." As a result, the black preacher is
so busy trying to gain the white man's approval by doing what the
white man himself has never done, and has no intention of doing,
that he has no time to concern himself with the real issues, such
as economic justice and the freedom to walk the streets as a man.

H. MUSLIM MORALITY

In their day-to-day living, the Black Muslims are governed
by a stringent code of private and social morality. Since they do
not look forward to an afterlife, this morality is not related to any
doctrine of salvation. It is, quite simply, the style of living appro-
priate to a divine Black Man in his capacity as true ruler of the
planet Earth.

Ritual requirements are inextricably mixed with moral in-
junctions. The Muslim is expected to pray five times a day — at
sunrise, noon, mid-afternoon, sundown and before retiring — and
a sixth time if he rises during the night. All prayers are made
facing east, toward the Holy City of Mecca. Before each prayer,
he must make the proper ablutions: rinsing the mouth, washing
the hands, feet and forearms, and so on. Cleanliness of the body,
"inside and outside," is essential.

The Faith and the Future 81

Certain foods, such as pork and corn bread, are forbidden
to the Muslim, for "they are a slow death" to those who eat them.
Many other foods common to the diet of Negroes, especially in
the South, are not to be eaten, since they constitute a "slave diet"
and "there are no slaves in Islam." Lamb, chicken, fish and beef
are approved, but all foods must be strictly fresh. The hog is
considered filthy — "a poison food, hated of Allah" — and was
never intended to be eaten except by the white race.38

One Muslim minister explained why the eating of pork is
prohibited: "The hog is dirty, brutal, quarrelsome, greedy, ugly,
foul, a scavenger which thrives on filth. It is a parasite to all other
animals. It will even kill and eat its own young. Do you agree?
In short, the hog has all the characteristics of a white man!"
Asked to explain the analogy implied in the reference to the hog
eating its young, he replied, "Didn't they father a million half-
blacks during slavery and sell them off like cattle — for money?
Aren't they still bastardizing the race today to keep their wives
in servants at subsistence wages? This is eating your own young
and picking your teeth with the bones!"

Muhammad himself is vociferous in his dislike of pork and
those who eat it:

The hog is absolutely shameless. Most animals have a certain amount
of shyness, but not the hog or its eater. . . , The hog eater, it is a
fact, will go nude in public if allowed. His temper is easily aroused
. . . and he will speak the ugliest, vilest, and most filthy language. . . ,39

Tobacco is also forbidden, and Muslims are admonished
against overeating — a habit to which the so-called Negroes are
alleged to be particularly susceptible. An overweight Muslim may
be penalized by a fine, which continues until he reduces. In gen-
eral, one meal a day is considered sufficient, for such restraint
eliminates physical and mental sluggishness and leaves more time
for industry.

Certain temple activities are considered morally binding and
lapses can be swiftly punished. The Muslim is required, for ex-
ample, to attend two (and occasionally more) temple meetings a
week. In extraordinary circumstances he may be excused if he
secures permission in advance; but members who fail to attend

82 The Faith and the Future

without such permission are summarily suspended. Male Muslims
are also expected to "fish for the dead" — that is, to go into the
streets in search of potential members. Unsuccessful "fishermen"
are penalized.

Sexual morality is defined in ultra-puritanical terms and is
said to be strictly enforced. Any philanderer is answerable to the
quasi-judicial militia, the FOI. Courtship or marriage outside the
group is discouraged, and unremitting pressure is put on non-
Muslim spouses to join the Black Nation. Divorce is frowned
upon but allowed. No Muslim woman may be alone in a room
with any man except her husband; and provocative or revealing
dress, including cosmetics, is absolutely forbidden. Any Muslim
who participates in an interracial liaison may incur severe pun-
ishment, even expulsion, from the Movement. Clear lines are
drawn to indicate the behavior and social role appropriate to each
sex; and Muslim males are expected to be constantly alert for any
show of interest in a Muslim woman on the part of a white man,
for whom sex is alleged to be a degrading obsession.

The regeneration of criminals and other fallen persons is a
prime concern of the Black Muslims, and they have an enviable
record of success. Muhammad claims that his Movement has
done more to "clean up the so-called Negroes" than all the
churches and social agencies combined. Malcolm X scarcely
exaggerated when he declared:

It is a known fact, and sociologists agree that when a man becomes
a follower of Mr. Muhammad, no matter how bad his morals or
habits were [before], he immediately takes upon himself a pronounced
change which everyone admits. He [Muhammad] stops them from
being dope addicts. He stops them from being alcoholics, [and alco-
hol] is a curse on the so-called Negroes. He has taken men who were
thieves, who broke the law — men who were in prison — and reformed
them so that no more do they steal, no more do they commit crimes
against the government. I should like to think that this government
would thank Mr. Muhammad for doing what it has failed to do toward
rehabilitating men who have been classed as hardened criminals. . . .
The psychologists and the penologists — all the sociologists — admit
that crime is on the increase, in prison and out. Yet when the Black
Man who is a hardened criminal hears the teachings of Mr. Muham-
mad, immediately he makes an about-face. Where the warden couldn't
straighten him out through solitary confinement, as soon as he be-

The Faith and the Future 83

comes a Muslim, he begins to become a model prisoner right in that
institution, far more so than whites or so-called Negroes who confess
Christianity.40

Eric Hoffer, however, in his perceptive study of mass move-
ments, comments on this phenomenon from a rather different
point of view:

It sometimes seems that mass movements are custom-made to fit the
needs of the criminal — not only for the catharsis of his soul but also
for the exercise of his inclinations and talents. . . . There is a tender
spot for the criminal and an ardent wooing of him in all mass move-
ments. ... It is perhaps true that the criminal who embraces a holy
cause is more ready to risk his life and go to extremes in its defense
than people who are awed by the sanctity of life and property.41

Crime, he suggests, is a kind of escape-valve in which "the under-
ground pressure of malcontents and misfits often leaks out." The
mass movement draws this scattered energy to itself and harnesses
it for its own purposes. Whether this portends an increased haz-
ard for society as a result of the Black Muslims' assiduous reha-
bilitation, time alone will tell.

But the rank-and-file Muslim is expected to evince general
character traits that can only benefit the society as a whole. Men
are expected to live soberly and with dignity, to work hard, to
devote themselves to their families' welfare and to deal honestly
with all men. They are expected to obey all constituted authority
— even the usurped and corrupt authority of the white man, until
the Black Nation returns to power. Women are especially en-
joined not to imitate "the silly and often immoral habits of the
white woman," which can only wreck their marriages and their
children. While equal in every way to their husbands, they are
taught to obey them. Modesty, thrift and service are recom-
mended as their chief concerns.

Above all, self-reliance and a sense of mutual responsibility
are the hallmarks of Muslim morality. Muhammad urges his
people:

Put your brains to thinking for self; your feet to walking in the direc-
tion of self; your hands to working for self and your children. . . .
Stop begging for what others have and help yourself to some of this
good earth. . . . We must go for ourselves. . . . This calls for the
unity of us all to accomplish it!42

84 The Faith and the Future

m. THE GOALS OF THE MOVEMENT

The ends toward which the Muslim organization is directed
are the most nebulous points of its entire body of doctrine. This
is the area in which the Muslim is almost certain to become vague,
mystical, eschatological and evasive under questioning. He may
give a misleading impression that the Movement has no well-
defined objective or that it lacks the ability to accomplish its goal.
But the facts are quite to the contrary. The Muslim knows where
he is going, or at least thinks he does, and what appears to be
haziness or naivete is only shrewd diplomacy.

Some uncritical observers have tended to dismiss the Move-
ment as "confused and inconsistent" or else as having "improb-
able" or "fantastic" goals. Muhammad is more often written off as
an "illiterate crackpot" or a "self-seeking charlatan" than taken
seriously as a "race leader." His followers are frequently categor-
ized by their upper-class critics as "ignorant Southern-type Negroes
who don't know any better," and their Movement is dismissed as
"just another Harlem-type cult." There are probably elements of
truth in all these but they are not the whole truth, and they do not
answer any of the really important questions. To ignore the
Movement on such grounds would be absurd.

The Black Muslim Movement is alive and growing — at a
rate which seriously embarrasses Negro leaders with more moder-
ate programs. It has a vitality unmatched by any other organized
movement with a large Negro membership. The pertinent question
is why this is so. An examination of the goals of the Movement —
as they have been stated or implied in its literature and public
lectures, and as they may be inferred from careful observation
and analysis — may offer some insight regarding the Muslims'
ability to attract and hold an important segment of the Negro
masses.

The United Front of Black Men

There can be no doubt whatever that Muhammad wants to
see "every Black Man in America reunited with his own." This
means, of course, that every Negro Christian is the target of the

The Faith and the Future 85

Movement. At the present time the Movement is predominantly
lower-class, and the Muslims are aware that the middle and upper
classes will be harder to reach, for these classes are the "satisfied
Black Men who think they have the least to gain." Yet Muham-
mad declares: "We are trying to reach all Black Men, those in the
colleges and those in the jails. We need leaders at every level to
challenge the lies of the white man. We need scholars to search
out the truth independently of what the white man has written."43

The Muslims' present membership goal is set at a million
followers by the end of 1961, five million by 1964. Part of this
growth is expected to result from an intensive recruitment drive,
part from the increasing disillusion of the Negro middle and upper
classes. "By then even the Uncle Toms will know that no matter
who they put in the White House, the so-called Negroes are right
where they were before."

The Muslim ideal is "a United Front of Black Men," who
will "take the offensive and carry the fight for justice and freedom
to the enemy." Through such a United Front, "the American
Negroes will discover themselves, elevate their distinguished men
and women . . . give outlets to their talented youth, and assume
the contours of a nation."44 Because he pursues a United Front,
Muhammad's attacks against Negro leadership have been mainly
retaliatory, and the necessity for such a public display of disunity
is distressing to him. During 1960 special attention was given to
removing the differences which divide Muslim and Negro leader-
ship. In an address delivered in Detroit in January 1960, Ray-
mond Sharrieff, Supreme Captain of the FOI, announced:

Nineteen sixty marks the beginning of a new era, an era in which our
Leader, the Honorable Mr. Elijah Muhammad, plans to unite every
stratum of the American Black Man. . . . Even if not a member of
our Temple. . . . Religious, economic and political differences are
luxuries we American Black Men cannot afford. We must, in the
Sixties, sit together and counsel.45

Black unity — the "Black Man's one hope for freedom" — is
held by the Muslims to be the white man's most haunting fear.
And the white man can bring intensely divisive pressures to bear,
because the American Negroes, "a nation within a nation," are
an "occupied people." The whites control communications, arms

86 The Faith and the Future

and the loyalty of the so-called Negro leadership as thoroughly
and effectively as they did during World War II.46 Operating
through "professional Uncle Toms," they have thrown up barriers
to black unity; and the divided black people have no way to pro-
tect their rights or make themselves heard.

The whites are said to be so desperate that even talk of black
unity is labeled seditious. Stool pigeons are planted everywhere
to spy on their own people: "The same Negroes whose fathers
were sold at auction in the town square sell themselves and their
people at the white man's dinner table," one Muslim minister
declared with disgust. But these traitors are known, and they will
be dealt with in due time.

The white man can hire them one against the other for just a few
dollars ... or even a smile. The Negroes must put a stop to the
white man's stool pigeons among them ... if they are ever to become
a nation recognized by the nations of the earth.47

We have a few who are being paid to keep the enemy well informed
of all we say. One day they will be out.48

Muhammad warns the Negro community that "the government
makes every Negro who opens his mouth in favor of their own
kind a promoter of sedition, and labels their teaching as being
subversive or un-American." Even " 'divine truth' is un-American
if it is on the side of the poor Negroes." But the Negro com-
munity should not be panicked into avoiding Muhammad's teach-
ings as seditious, for this accusation is only a white trick to isolate
the Muslims and frighten the black masses. "The government is
not after me, they are after you to keep you from following me."49
Are Muhammad's teachings in fact seditious? No one can
say, for his goals — and the ultimate methods he would use to reach
them — are never baldly stated. "You are about to become the
Head," he tells his followers, "and this should be good news. . . .
25,000,000 people should not be satisfied with anything short of
a country for themselves. If you cannot think like a Muslim, it is
because you are a coward. . . . The time has come for me to do
something for my beautiful nation."50 His goal sounds possibly
like secession, and his methods are apparently not for cowards,
but his only actual commitment is a cryptic promise to "do some-

The Faith and the Future 87

thing." It would not be out of keeping with Muhammad's philoso-
phy for this promise to mask seditious intentions, but an indict-
ment could never be supported on such evidence.

Muhammad is aware of this, and the wily Muslim walks the
precipice between sedition and religious license with consummate
skill. He speaks knowingly of an impending "Battle of Armaged-
don" and has promised that Negroes "will soon gain control of
New York City — and that 'white rule' in the United States will be
overthrown by 1970. "61 Later this is explained to mean that the
white nations would destroy each other and that the Black Nation
would inherit the spoils. Yet the attitude of such an explanation
is hardly consistent with the fervent militancy which characterizes
all Muslim doctrine. A return to the Mosaic lex talionis is encour-
aged, for example, as the only possible guarantor of meaningful
survival; and Muslims are urged to "fight like 'hell' with those
who fight like 'hell' against you, and the world of mankind will
respect us as equals."52

In a Negro leadership conference held in New York City,
Muhammad's chief lieutenant, Malcolm X, reminded his con-
freres that they must surely "recognize that anyone who can
assemble so many well-disciplined young Negroes together as
swiftly as we, should never be underestimated as a force to be
recognized and reckoned with here in Harlem's community affairs
and conferences."53 The point could not have been lost on the
assembled leaders, who could hardly imagine the necessity of
swiftly assembling many well-disciplined young men for a con-
ference.

Such, then, is the Muslim vision of a United Front of Black
Men — a phalanx of American Negroes no longer torn by dissen-
sion but standing shoulder to shoulder, ready for battle. The
leader and the enemy are known, but everything else is shrouded
in mystery: the methods of combat, the terms of surrender and
the new way of life to be established after the victory.

Racial Separation

The Black Muslims demand absolute separation of the black
and the white races. They are willing to approach this goal by

88 The Faith and the Future

stages — the economic and political links, for example, need not
be severed immediately — but all personal relationships between
the races must be broken now. Economic severance, the next
major step, is already under way, and political severance will fol-
low in good time. But only with complete racial separation will
the perfect harmony of the universe be restored.

Those so-called Negroes who seek integration with the
American white man are, say the Muslims, unrealistic and stupid.
The white man is not suddenly going to share with his erstwhile
slaves the advantages and privileges he has so long pre-empted.
America became the richest and most powerful nation in the
world because she harnessed, for more than three hundred years,
the free labor of millions of human beings. But she does not have
the decency to share her wealth and privileges with "those who
worked so long for nothing, and even now receive but a pittance."
The so-called Negroes are still "free slaves." Millions of them
are not allowed to vote, and few are permitted to hold office.
None can wholly escape the implications of color. Ralph Bunche,
the most distinguished American Negro on the world scene, re-
fused a sub-Cabinet post in the federal government because he
could not live and move in the nation's capital with the freedom
accorded to the most illiterate white thug. Even the recognized
enemies of the country, so long as they are white, come to America
and immediately enjoy the privileges of freedom. To American
Negroes — hundreds of thousands of whom have fought and died
for their nation — these same privileges are denied.

Again, the Muslims maintain that only the so-called Negro
leaders want to integrate. The black masses have no love for the
white man and no desire to be in his company. "But for the
pseudo-Negro leaders, to be accepted by whites and to be in their
company is worth more than heaven itself." These Negroes are
forever "begging and licking the white man's boots for [him] to
smile and pat [them] on the back."

Finally, the whole scheme of integration is only a stratagem
through which the white man hopes to save himself from an inevi-
table fate. He has sowed the wind, and now he must reap the
whirlwind. The ascendancy of the white West is ended. The
wheel must turn. When the white man was the undisputed ruler

The Faith and the Future 89

of the earth, who spoke of integration? Now he has seen his
empires crumble, his slaves shake off their bonds, his enemies
multiply all over the world — "so he is willing to throw his faithful
dog the driest bone he has, hoping that dog will once more forget
the past and rush out to save his master." But the Negro will still
be the loser, for the white man will only "integrate him" where it
serves his own advantage, and this will always be at the bottom.

Muhammad urges the Black Man to stand aloof. Why inte-
grate with a dying world?

Today's world is floating in corruption; its complete distintegration is
both imminent and inescapable. Any man who integrates with the
world must share in its disintegration and destruction. If the Black
Man would but listen, he need not be a part of this certain doom.54

The Muslims reject the ultimate integration — racial inter-
marriage— as sternly as any Southern white, and for much the
same reasons.

Usually, when the white man says "integrate," he has reservations.
He doesn't want to see a black man marry his woman. We all agree
on that. Muslims who follow Mr. Muhammad are absolutely against
intermarriage. When you say "integration," if you mean that every-
one should have equal opportunities economically, that everyone
should have the right to socialize with whom they please, that everyone
should have the right to all the cultural advantages and things of that
sort, well and good. But if [to] integrate means that a Black Man
should run out and marry a white woman, or that a white man
should run out and get my woman, then I'm against it. We're abso-
lutely against intermarriage!55

The Muslims are convinced of their "superior racial heritage" and
believe that a further admixture of white blood will only weaken
the Black Nation physically and morally, as well as increase the
loss of face the so-called Negro has already suffered by permitting
the white man to bastardize the race. The white race will soon
perish, and then even a trace of white blood will automatically
consign its possessor to an inferior status.

Muhammad conceives his mission to include the re-purifica-
tion of the "Lost-Nation-in-the-West" — ideologically, morally and,
above all, biologically. Only when this has been done can the
black people of America assume their rightful place of dignity and

90 The Faith and the Future

leadership among the triumphant black nations of the world. The
United Front of Black Men, therefore, will countenance no inter-
racial dallying. The intelligent Black Man must look beyond
today's personal whimsies to the building of the Black Nation of
tomorrow.

Economic Separation

The call for a Black Front has important economic over-
tones, for the Muslims' economic policies are a fundamental
aspect of the total Movement. Their basic premise is that the
white man's economic dominance gives him the power of life and
death over the blacks. "You can't whip a man when he's helping
you," says Muhammad; and his oft-quoted aphorism is economi-
cally, if not socially or politically, cogent.

Economic security was stressed from the first days of the
Movement. As early as 1937 it was observed that:

The prophet taught them that they are descendants of nobles. ... To
show their escape from slavery and their restoration to their original
high status, they feel obliged to live in good houses and wear good
clothes . . . and are ashamed that they have not been able to pur-
chase better commodities or rent finer homes.56

As we have seen, the pendulum has swung back toward the center.
The Muslims still prize industriousness and a sense of responsi-
bility, but they shy away from conspicuous consumption. They do
not live in the residential sections generally preferred by the Negro
business and professional classes, and they do not sport the flashy
automobiles usually associated with Negro revivalistic cults. On
the contrary, they strongly affirm their identity with the working
class. There is a strong emphasis on the equality of the ministers
and the "brothers," and all tend to live pretty much alike in terms
of housing — in the Black Ghetto — and visible goods.

Thrift is encouraged; and while credit purchasing is not for-
bidden, Muslims are reminded that "debt is slavery." These coun-
sels have had a clearly salutary effect. Indeed, the more faithful
a Muslim is to the teachings of his leaders, the better his economic
condition is likely to be.

The Faith and the Future 91

The ascetic manner of life of the Moslems [Muslims] also has
contributed to their economic improvement. No money whatever
is spent by them on liquor, tobacco, or pork. Their one meal of the
day consists almost entirely of vegetables and fruits. Consequently
their expenditure on food is significantly smaller than is that of other
Negroes. . . ,57

Money must not be wasted, and no Muslim is expected to
live beyond his means.

Stop wasting your money! Your money was not given to you, so
why should you give it away for what you can do without? . . . We
could save millions of dollars [for] education . . . land, machines . . .
cattle . . . homes and factories. . . . Feed your own stomachs and
hire your own scientists from among yourselves. . . .

How can we begin? Stop spending money for tobacco, dope,
cigarettes, whiskey, fine clothes, fine automobiles, expensive rugs and
carpets, idleness, sport and gambling. Stop . . . living on credit
loans . . . seeking the highest priced merchandise. ... If you must
have a car, buy the low-priced car. . . . We must make a better future
for ourselves and our children. . . ,58

Such rigorous self-discipline is not only a virtue in itself but
also a step toward the establishment of the Black Nation. Until
the economic independence of the Black Nation can be assured,
however, some Muslims will find it necessary to work for the
white man. There is no shame in that, for all work is honest and
even the meanest job can be done with dignity.

The Muslims are urged to be competent and honest in all
their dealings, giving a full day's work for the wages received.
Muslims are expected to "respect authority, on the job and wher-
ever else it is legitimately exercised." Each working day is to be
considered a learning experience against the time when the Black
Nation will operate its own factories, farms and other enterprises.
But this policy pays immediate dividends as well:

The members of the cult claim they have secured work more easily
than have other Negroes. To some extent their claim seems to be
justified. . . . Through the Nation of Islam they have gained a new
status and a new confidence in themselves. When they meet Cau-
casians, they rejoice in the knowledge that they themselves are su-

92 The Faith and the Future

periors meeting members of an inferior race. Employment managers
tend to accept more readily persons whose appearance gives evidence
of clean living and self-reliance, than those who show the marks of
debauchery, defeat and despair.59

As an ideal, the Muslims advocate a complete economic
withdrawal from the white community. Their transitional goals
seem to hinge on the establishment of black businesses and indus-
tries which will reduce interracial contact to a minimum, provide
jobs and capital for black workers and entrepreneurs, and offer
the sense of group security proper to an "independent" people.
To accomplish this end, Muhammad has drawn up an "Economic
Blueprint" which is published occasionally in some elements of
the Negro press and which is the basic text for Muslim lectures
on the economic plight of the so-called Negro. The Blueprint
opens with a description of the Black Man in white, Christian
America as a Lazarus under the table of the rich, "begging for
crumbs" and "entangled in want in the midst of plenty." Lazarus
is asleep — "but I go," says Muhammad, "that I may wake him."

The key to the Black Man's economic security consists of
five simple propositions:

1. Know thyself and be yourself. Islam makes a true Brother to
[every other] Brother. . . . Acknowledge and recognize that you
are a member of the Creator's [i.e., the Black] Nation, and act
accordingly. . . . Recognize the necessity for unity. . . . This
requires action and deeds, not words and lip service.

2. Pool your resources, physically as well as financially.

3. Stop wanton criticism of everything that is black-owned and
black-operated.

4. Keep in mind — Jealousy Destroys From Within.

5. Observe the operations of the white man. He is successful. He
makes no excuses for his failures. He works hard — in a col-
lective manner. You do the same.60

Muslims are urged to pool their resources and techniques in mer-
chandising, manufacturing, building, maintenance — any field in
which unity and harmony will contribute to efficiency and effec-
tiveness. Those who lack skills or education are urged to ask help
from their brothers with more training or experience.

The Faith and the Future 93

Above all, Muslims are encouraged to "buy black" whenever
possible. "The white man spends his money with his own kind,
which is natural. You too, must do this. Help to make jobs for
your own kind. Take a lesson from the Chinese and Japanese
. . . and go all out to support your own kind." .Business and
professional men must not exploit their black customers or clients;
but the black consumer must not hesitate to spend the few extra
pennies the black businessman may have to charge in order to
meet the competition of the advantaged whites.

The Muslims themselves maintain numerous small businesses
and other enterprises. In Chicago they operate department stores,
groceries, bakeries, restaurants and various kinds of service estab-
lishments. They own large farms in Michigan and near Atlanta,
Georgia; and in practically every city with a temple, they have
restaurants, barber shops, clothing stores and occasionally other
businesses. All are run with efficiency and aplomb.

True Muslims are reminded that if one has a bowl of soup,
all have soup. "Everywhere, the Negro is exploited by the white
man; now, the Black Man must learn to protect his own, using the
white man's techniques." By way of demonstration, Muhammad
recently bought a large modern apartment building in Chicago,
evicted the white tenants, moved in house-hungry Negroes from
the South Side ghetto and lowered the rents.

Muhammad believes that much of the American Negro's
"sickness" is economic. In February 1960, as a gesture toward
strengthening this Lost Nation, he gave free exhibition space to
Negro businesses at his Annual Convention, held at the giant
Coliseum in Chicago. The three-day convention attracted some
fifteen thousand delegates and visitors, and the exhibition was
designed to "provide the opportunity for Negro businessmen to
promote their businesses in line with Mr. Muhammad's program
of Economic Security for the American Negro." There were
Asian and African exhibits as well, but the emphasis was on the
American Negro's potential for economic independence. The
exhibition also represented an open bid by the Muslims for an
increasing share of leadership among Negroes — a display of the
Muslim potential for inducing the kind of race-consciousness to
which Negro business must ordinarily look for survival.

94 The Faith and the Future

Some Good Earth

It would be hazardous to assume that the Black Muslim
Movement is all religion and economics. That these are funda-
mental aspects of the Movement is not open to serious doubt.
But what does Muhammad envisage beyond a well-fed Black
Nation under the sign of the Star and Crescent?

When Marcus Garvey began to speak too plainly about the
political aspirations of the Universal Negro Improvement Asso-
ciation, his movement was labeled "seditious." Elijah Muham-
mad, who is not only a student of Garvey but was himself ar-
rested and charged with sedition very early in his Muslim career,
has learned the hazards of plain talk in the area of politics. It is
doubtful whether any except the top leadership know exactly what
the Movement's political aspirations are, or why. The character-
istic mood of the Muslim laity is simply a blind faith — a complete
confidence in Elijah Muhammad, who "has a plan for all of us"
and is considered well-nigh infallible. The Muslim brotherhood
have a sense of manifest destiny, an awareness of some kind of
impending social cataclysm in which they will figure prominently.
They are not certain what this cataclysm will be or when it will
take place, but they are unshakably convinced that Messenger
Muhammad knows. And they are prepared to lay down their
lives at a signal from their leader, if dying will forward the goal
he has in mind.

Doubtless the Federal Bureau of Investigation could relax
its constant vigilance if Muhammad were more explicit about this
goal. Malcolm X alleges that no fewer than fifteen FBI agents
are regularly assigned to cover his New York temple alone, and
Muhammad complains that the FBI could readily catch "all the
lynchers and school-bombers in the South" with a fraction of the
agents assigned to cover his personal movements. Responsible
Negro leadership and the concerned white community would
similarly be obliged if Muhammad's political goals were known.
But the Muslims have shown little inclination to announce their
ultimate intentions. They revel in the guessing game in which
they are "it." Malcolm X often twits his questioners: "Those who
say don't know, and those who know aren't saying."

The Faith and the Future 95

At best, Muslim statements about their political goals are
couched in mystical and eschatological innuendo or else in cryptic
allusions to "a separate nation for ourselves, right here in
America" or to "some good earth, right here in America, where
we can go off to ourselves." Muhammad announced to some
ten thousand listeners in Washington, D. C.:

You can't blame the government for not giving you anything when
you are not asking for anything. ... It is certainly evident by now
that you were never intended to be a full citizen. . . . Your role was
that of a slave and today, even . . . that intent underlies your role
in the body politic.

Our oppressors are determined to keep our eyes in the sky while
they control the land under our feet, . . . smite our cheeks and rob
our pockets.

To integrate with evil is to be destroyed with evil. What we want —
indeed, justice for us is to be set apart. We want, and must insist upon
an area in this land that we can call our own, somewhere [where]
we can hold our heads [up] with pride and dignity without the con-
tinued harassments and indignities of our oppressors.

... let us carry in our hearts the doctrine of separation from our
oppressors; let us demand a home we can call our own, support for
ourselves until we are able to become self-sufficient.61

Usually the quantity of land mentioned is "two or three
states," but the figure has sometimes been raised. In an address
at the Muslim Convention of 1960, Muhammad suggested:

The best thing the white man can do is give us justice and stop giving
us hell. I'm asking for justice. If they won't give us justice, then
let us separate ourselves from them and live in four or five states in
America, or leave the country altogether.62

Malcolm X thinks "nine or ten states would be enough." The
Muslims have never indicated what states would be acceptable to
them or just how they propose to acquire them, but the South-
west has featured prominently in speculation.

The Muslims often mention the alternative of leaving the
country. In his column in the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, for

96 The Faith and the Future

example, Muhammad said: "All we are asking for is a separate
state or territory. ... It doesn't have to be in America."63 But
this alternative is never emphasized, and Muhammad repeatedly
calls attention to the Black Nation's inherent right to land in
America. This claim is grounded on two propositions: (1) the
white man stole the country from the Indians, who are non-white
peoples and brothers to the so-called Negroes, and (2) the
Negroes worked for three hundred years as absolute slaves and an
additional one hundred years as "free slaves," thereby earning a
share in the country. Yet what share have they received?

We are kicked around . . . until they say: "Move out

n r," even though they killed our people, the Indians, in order

to possess the country for themselves.64

We have not been given anything but hell in return for 400
years of hard labor, sweat and blood, without justice. We are not
wanted in their society and are hunted like rabbits all over the
country. . . .

After 100 years of so-called freedom . . . the slavemasters
have not offered you [a home] even in the worst part of this coun-
try, though our labor and our poor fathers' labor before us helped
make America what it is.65

Malcolm X, speaking to a group of white listeners, has set
forth a dramatic demand — not only for territory but also for a
subsidy from the United States government. Millions of black
men, he reminded his audience, "worked 300 years without a pay
day. We feel that we've got something due us, and I don't mean
this phony integration stuff." The United States, he declared,
must "compensate us for the labor stolen from us." And he ex-
plained how:

The United States can subsidize Israel to start a state — Israel hasn't
fought for this country. The United States can subsidize India and
Latin America — and they tell the Americans to "go home!" We even
subsidize Poland and Yugoslavia and those are Communist countries!

Why can't the Black Man in America have a piece of land with
technical help and money to get his own nation established? What's
so fantastic about that? We fought, died and helped to build this

The Faith and the Future 97

country, and since we can't be citizens here, then help us to build a
nation of our own. We don't have to go to Africa. We can do it
right here.66

There are indications that Muhammad does not really con-
sider the physical separation of the races in this country a viable
issue. He has offered no concrete proposal for effecting such a
separation or for a partition of the country. The Muslims' real-
estate holdings are scattered across the country, from Boston to
Los Angeles, and they are preparing to spend at least $20 million
to erect an Islamic Center in Chicago.

These facts, however, are capable of another and more sin-
ister interpretation. The Muslims are convinced that "the white
race . . . will never agree to divide America with us, though our
blood is spilled on this soil and on foreign soil for the freedom of
white Americans and their European friends."67 But the white
man's rule is at an end, and a "Superior Power" will now "create
a 'New World,' a New People, a New Order, and a New Govern-
ment."68 What measures will this New Government take? If the
Muslims will not leave America, and if the white man will not
share the land with them, one drastic alternative remains:

The wicked must be punished for their wickedness poured out upon
us. ... This country is large enough to separate the two (black and
white), and they both [could] live here, but that would not be suc-
cessful. The best solution is for everyone to go to his own coun-
try. . . . The native home of the white race is in Europe.69

5 Reaching for the Masses

Unlike Athena, the Black Muslim Movement did not spring
full-blown into maturity. It evolved over a generation and only
gradually became a well-known symbol of protest — at least in the
black ghettos of America's principal industrial cities. How shall
we account for its growth and its attractiveness to the Negro
masses as a social movement, quite apart from its identity as a
religion?

Organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban
League, for all their virtues, have not caught the imagination and
adherence of the Negro masses. Their memberships tend to com-
prise middle- and upper-class Negroes and whites, in each case
the least disprivileged of their race. It is true that the lower-class
Negro stands to benefit most from their services, for he is most
deprived of the values they attempt to make available. But their
philosophies are not directed toward him, and he has not taken
them to his heart.

The Black Muslims, by contrast, are undeniably a mass
movement. From their present base of more than 100,000 mem-
bers, they are reaching for the support of the entire Negro lower
class — and, ultimately, of all other black Americans. This ambi-
tion is of crucial importance, for it controls every public state-
ment and activity of the Muslims, every gesture by which their
myths and doctrines are expressed in action.

I. THE NATURE OF A MASS MOVEMENT

The Importance of Mass Membership

A mass movement usually begins with the degeneration of
some familiar corporate structure — a church, in the sense of a
religious denomination, or a major social or political unity —
which has formerly maintained the social equilibrium. So long as

98

Reaching for the Masses 99

this dominating structure is strong and vigorous in its social con-
cern, mass movements do not develop. There is no need of them.
But as these corporate ties dissolve — as the masses are dislocated
from their "hereditary milieu" — many individuals become highly
receptive to the new corporate unity implicit in a mass movement.1

Such people are the strength of a mass movement. Neither
money nor prestige nor heritage approaches in importance the
physical fact of a participating membership. The effectiveness of
what a mass leader has to say depends upon how many people
believe him and trust him for deliverance. Those who do believe
him will be in the movement, and they are the most impressive
arguments for the potential converts.

The principal rewards of a mass movement are always in
the future, and the future takes on security in terms of the number
of persons who are willing to identify themselves with it. The
few are induced to follow the many, not because the collective
mind of the many is presumed to be wiser, but because there is a
certain loneliness in social isolation that is somewhat relieved by
identification with a cause. Fifty million Frenchmen may very
well be wrong, but they make reassuring company. Moreover, for
the oppressed, the remotest hope is more acceptable than the
present reality, and the strength of hope is intensified geometrically
as those who share the hope increase in number.

A mass movement, therefore, does not begin with logic or
a program, or even a defined goal. It begins with people who
participate in a common hope for a better tomorrow. The task of
the leader of a mass movement is to make that hope inclusive and
vivid for all who find their present circumstances painful or un-
acceptable.

The True Believer2

It is a popular misconception that mass movements are
formed by the most destitute elements of the society. This is
almost never true. The destitute do not revolt. The mass move-
ment may become a symbol of hope which draws the destitute to
membership, but the movement draws its initial followers from
the ranks of the merely discontented, those who have not yet lost

100 Reaching for the Masses

all hope for better things. They see in the leader and his doctrine
a chance to fulfill the desires and longings they have not quite
relinquished, even in the face of the most discouraging adversity.
In short, it is not present suffering but future expectation that
impels the dissatisfied and the deprived to unite in protest.

The fanatical members of a mass movement, the "true be-
lievers," may vary greatly among themselves, but they have certain
unmistakable traits in common. Their most pronounced charac-
teristic is a desire for a personal rebirth — an escape to a new
identity, in which they will be freed of their present restrictions
and oppressions. A mass movement promises them a new "face."
The old, unappreciated self is abandoned; in its place is a new
self, neatly designed to inspire pride, confidence and hope.

Except for the opportunist and the adventurer, the mass
movement offers no appeal to the individual interested in personal
advancement on his own merit. Those who have learned to accept
themselves or who have gained approval and acceptance in the
society at large are not moved to exchange their individuality for
a corporate identity. They do not wish to be lost in the mass.
Only those who have lost all hope of gaining acceptance for them-
selves as they are — but who still hunger for acceptance — will seek
to compel that acceptance by adopting a powerful corporate
identity. The true believer, despised or ignored as John Smith,
will be respected as, say, a Black Muslim; and he will count the
submergence of his individual personality a trivial price to pay.

The true believer is ordinarily a misfit in the society he re-
jects. He may be a temporary misfit who has not yet found his
niche — perhaps a returned veteran, an unemployed college gradu-
ate, a juvenile or a recent immigrant. Such people tend to exhibit
a nervous restlessness and dissatisfaction. They envy the appar-
ently unhampered progress of other men, and they are haunted
by a fear that their best years will be wasted before they can
realize their personal goals. These temporary misfits are receptive
to the promises of the mass movement, but they are not totally
committed to its doctrines, for they have not completely repudi-
ated themselves. Any change in their personal fortunes will
reconcile them to the larger society.

The permanent misfit's allegiance is without reservation, for

Reaching for the Masses 101

he can find salvation only in escape from his repudiated self.
Such a man may be an artist, composer, preacher, scientist or
writer who has failed decisively to achieve a meaningful success.
He may be an ex-criminal or a guilt-ridden individual striving to
lose his past vileness by participating in a holy crusade. Perhaps
the most tragic of the permanent misfits is the corporate minority,
bent on assimilation but blocked by visibility — that "irreparable
defect in body" which precludes acceptance. In such a minority:

. . . the individual stands alone, pitted against prejudice and dis-
crimination. He is also burdened with the sense of guilt, however
vague, of a renegade. . . . Within a minority bent on assimilation,
the least and most successful (economically and culturally) are
likely to be more frustrated than those in between. The man who
fails sees himself as an outsider; and, in the case of a member of a
minority group who wants to blend with the majority, failure inten-
sifies the feeling of not belonging. . . . Thus it is to be expected that
the least and most successful of a minority bent on assimilation should
be the most responsive to the appeal of a proselytizing mass move-
ment. . . . The least and most successful among the Negroes are the
most race conscious.3

The true believer has no purpose and no goal except in
relation to the movement with which he has identified himself,
His acceptance and assimilation into the group is so complete
that his personal identity is the corporate image. His confidence
is the confidence born of the strength and unity of the movement,
which can perform miracles of accomplishment beyond the reach
of any individual. Most important, he is no longer alone. He is
now accepted and wanted, rather than rejected and despised. And
as long as the movement lives, the true believer cannot really die,
for his life is in the corporate identity. To be expelled from it,
or to have it destroyed by an external force, would be a death
almost as real as physical death itself.

Leadership in the Mass Movement

The leader of a mass movement, like his true believers, is a
product of the circumstances which make the movement possible.
Ordinarily he is neither elected nor appointed, though he may have
already held a post at some level within the movement. More

102 Reaching for the Masses

often than not, the leader is simply "acclaimed" or "recognized,"
with formal investiture coming later if at all.

It has been said that the successful leader is a man who
determines where his followers want to go and leads them there.
Such a description applies a fortiori to the leader of a mass move-
ment. Whatever his morals or his motives, he must have an
almost uncanny sensitivity — an ability to empathize with and re-
flect the unspoken (and often unrecognized) yearnings of the
people he undertakes to lead. He must, in his own behavior,
reassure them by displaying a complete absence of fear and a
constant concern for their welfare. He must demonstrate an
unshakable conviction in the ultimate success of his cause, in
which he alone is aware of some unique and essential truth.

The leader's most important asset is his ability to surround
himself with a small coterie of worshipers who draw their inspira-
tion from him, are categorically willing to accept his will as their
own and are themselves capable leaders and organizers. No other
single factor will more clearly determine his failure or success.
But the leader can never rely wholly on his lieutenants; he must
be indomitable himself. He must have "a joy in defiance . . .
faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred;
contempt for the present . . . [and] a disregard of consistency and
fairness."4 He must also be able to estimate and manipulate the
human craving for the sense of security inherent in a communion
of cause and kind. Assemblages, parades, rituals, ceremonies,
uniforms — all the badges of belonging — are part of his repertoire
of leadership and control.

Originality is not important: the leader of a mass movement
appropriates from every source whatever ideas or techniques he
finds useful and presents them as originating with his own people.
Nor must he be a thinker in his own right. Many times in history,
the leaders of mass movements have been brilliant men, but their
appeal was not rooted in the quality of their ideas. "What counts
is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of
others, the singlehanded defiance of the world."5

The mass movement tends to be associated with the person
of the leader as though it were his creation. In reality, the leader
does not create the movement; he capitalizes upon conditions

Reaching for the Masses 103

which are the product of social interactions too diverse and too
momentous to be the work of one man. In a very real sense, mass
movements are set up and "waiting to happen" before the leader
arrives on the scene.

There is a period of waiting in the wings — often a very long period —
for all the great leaders whose entrance on the scene seems to us a
most crucial point in the course of a mass movement. Accidents and
the activities of other men have to set the stage for them before they
can enter and start their performance. "The commanding man in a
momentous day seems only to be the last accident in a series."6

But a coalescence of the peculiarly volatile elements of social
change does not automatically produce a mass movement. The
right man must be there. The elements must come together in
the presence of the unique personality which can successfully
catalyze or ignite them.

The Instruments of Unification

The characteristic feature of a mass movement is its unique
capacity for united action without consideration for the individual
sacrifices of its members. The personal self is lost in the corporate
whole and is expendable in the interests of the whole. Personal
privacy, personal judgment and often personal possessions, free-
dom and life itself are laid upon the corporate altar. The mass
movement exists as an instrument for united action and self-
sacrifice, not for the advancement of individuals. Whenever there
is a relaxation of collectivity, or when individual self-interest ap-
pears, the distinguishing character and the effectiveness of the
movement are lost.

Absolute self-sacrifice is the lifeblood of the movement;
contempt for death is the sure sign of faith. The true believer
places all his trust in the destiny of the movement, its doctrines
and its leader. He forsakes all values not sanctioned by the move-
ment and not among its stated objectives. He lives not for the
present but for the future; and not for his own future, but for the
glorious triumph of his cause. He has renounced all self-interest,
and even his most pragmatic affairs — earning a living, raising a
family — assume the character of a holy crusade.

104 Reaching for the Masses

What seems to count more than possession of instruments of power
is faith in the future . . . extravagant hope, even when not backed
by actual power, is likely to generate a most reckless daring. For the
hopeful can draw strength from the most ridiculous sources of power
— a slogan, a word, a button. No faith is potent unless it ... has a
millennial component.7

A mass movement, then, is unified first by faith, carried to
the extreme of self-sacrifice. It is unified also by its doctrines, for
the mass movement claims to possess the absolute truth — an eso-
teric knowledge of the past, a pellucid understanding of the pres-
ent, a perfect awareness of the future. This "truth" is a formidable
source of the movement's power, and the true believer "knows"
the "truth" through faith. He knows it with his heart rather than
with his mind.

The doctrines of a mass movement derive their power not
from their meaning but from their certitude. The leader's utter-
ances may be replete with the grossest nonsense, and rational
critics may search them in vain for some clue to his power. But
they miss the point. Reason and truth are not important; the
masses are roused to action by what they accept as true. A propo-
sition that can be tested can be proved false, but not a prophecy
or a revelation. A doctrine that is understood loses its power to
compel its hearers: he who accepts a mystery can only obey, but
he who understands it draws the power into himself. The true
believer, however, wants only to accept. Understanding is per-
sonal, and he has renounced self, so he feels no need to under-
stand. He has no doubts; he truly believes.

Self-mastery is another potent instrument of unification for
the mass movement. On the one hand, as the members overcome
in themselves the decadent habits and corrupt appetites of the
rejected society, their own last shreds of identification with that
society are symbolically overcome. On the other hand, certain
moral commitments claimed by the general society but imperfectly
observed by it take on an exaggerated importance within the move-
ment. As the members successfully (indeed, fanatically) honor
these commitments, they assert their moral superiority over all
those from whom they have set themselves apart. The true be-
liever is thus, in one sense, inevitably ambivalent: he seeks the

Reaching for the Masses 105

approval of the general society by accomplishing what it has
failed to accomplish, yet he scorns that society as worthless and
its opinions as insignificant.

The mass movement also establishes its own exclusive code
of behavior and institutes its own taboos. In the Black Muslim
Movement, for example, every Muslim is committed to defend
and protect every other "brother," even, if necessary, at the for-
feiture of his life. Timidity or any hint of reluctance in this regard
is absolutely taboo, and the rare lapses are punished summarily
by ostracism or rejection by the group. Moreover, there can be
no deviation from the "party line" as defined by the Messenger
and enunciated by his ministers. Even "independent interpreta-
tions" are absolutely taboo. The ministers speak with the voice
of Muhammad; the laity speak with the voice of the ministers;
and on subjects on which the Messenger has not spoken, no one
else in the Movement will venture to speak. In every facet of
behavior and belief, the true believer must relentlessly master his
own errant impulses and mold himself to the movement's unique
image. But in doing so, he lowers still further the stubborn bar-
riers of personal will that stand between his old, rejected self and
his new corporate identity.

Finally, the mass movement is drawn together and held to-
gether by hatred, "the most accessible and comprehensive of all
unifying agents." Eric Hoffer describes the effect of hatred upon
the true believer:

It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him
oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-
seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving
to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. . . . Common
hatred unites the most heterogeneous elements.8

Hatred requires an object, a devil.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but
never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass move-
ment is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.9

The genius of the leader of a mass movement is displayed in his
timing and his choice of who the devil is to be. The devil must be
an individual or group which is a socially legitimate hate-object,

106 Reaching for the Masses

but he must also be omnipresent. Every difficulty must be as-
cribed to his evil nature, and every accomplishment must be
vaunted as a triumph over him.

Hatred of the devil is the driving force of a mass movement.
It is, without doubt, the most immediate instrument of unification.
And, to complete the circle, it is the final product of every mass
movement.

... we have never, since the world began, heard of a merciful nation.
Nor ... of a merciful church or a merciful revolutionary party. The
hatred and cruelty which have their source in selfishness are ineffectual
things compared with the venom and ruthlessness born of selflessness
... we usually blame this shameful perversion on a cynical, power-
hungry leadership. Actually, it is the unification set in motion by
these enthusiasms, rather than the manipulations of a scheming leader-
ship, that transmutes noble impulses into a reality of hatred and
violence. The deindividualization which is a prerequisite for thorough
integration and selfless dedication is also, to a considerable extent, a
process of dehumanization.10

H. THE BLACK MUSLIMS AS A MASS MOVEMENT

Reaching for the Masses

Under Fard, the Muslims never had more than 8,000 mem-
bers, although the conditions for rapid growth were almost ideal.
Today the Muslims are flourishing: more than 100,000 members,
with more being assimilated every day. The difference lies in this:
Fard never had a movement. He only had a cult.

Muhammad's strategy has been to put the cult on parade —
on the streets, in the press, in the temples, wherever there are
people. And he has done this with impressive success. For local
action, he has had an able corps of ministers in the field; but
there were not many at first, and their fight was uphill. The press
gave him his first major assist, for it made him "controversial":
as a columnist in one of the most important Negro papers in the
country, he became a conversation piece for hundreds of thou-
sands of Negroes across America. Thousands of letters were sent
to Muhammad and to the Pittsburgh Courier, denouncing and

Reaching for the Masses 107

defending both the Messenger and the newspaper which provided
space for his message.

People went to the temples to see the man whose columns
they read. For the most part they were simply curious, but
Muhammad and his ministers are masters at capturing the curious.
In the temples Muhammad preached a somewhat different mes-
sage— not completely different, but different in emphasis. His
writings in the newspapers were generally filled with vague and
cryptic biblical interpretations. But in the privacy of the temples,
the white man was unmasked; his mistreatment of the so-called
Negro was rehearsed in bizarre detail and with militant outrage.

Moreover, Muhammad appealed to the newcomers not as
individuals but as a crowd. All persons entering a temple were
(and still are) searched for weapons as a precaution against the
assassination of a minister. This requirement intrigued the curious
and excited their sense of personal importance. Even to be
thought capable of assassinating an important leader was gratify-
ing to some who, in the structure of things, had no real identity
whatsoever. At the same time, they were awed and flattered at
being admitted, while all white men were rigidly excluded. The
initiative had passed to the Muslims: it was now the newcomers
who were tentatively accepted, but on trial.

Inside the temples, they were fascinated by the black-suited
young males with the red ties and the military bearing. They were
impressed by Muhammad's bold denunciation of the white man,
and they were enlightened by hearing for the first time the "truth"
about themselves, the Black Nation of Islam. For the most re-
ceptive among them, the potential true believers, a new vision
dawned. They joined — a few at first and then more and more —
and the character of the association began to change. The cult
had quietly died. The Movement had begun.

The Negro press helped to supply the initial impetus that
brought Muhammad and the Muslims to the attention of his poten-
tial followers. The white press has made him famous, and noto-
riety has sharply enhanced his attraction for the masses. In the
summer of 1959, Mike Wallace presented a television docu-
mentary featuring the Muslim leader,11 and articles soon followed
in Time, U.S. News and World Report, Reader's Digest and other

108 Reaching for the Masses

elements of the national press. Muhammad's total following was
then less than 30,000. A month after he had been "discovered"
by the mass media, his following had doubled, and it has con-
tinued to spiral ever since. Ironically, many of these magazines
and newspapers sought to "expose" Muhammad as "a purveyor
of cold black hatred," 12 or otherwise as a social anomaly with no
real future. They underestimated his appeal to an important seg-
ment of the dissatisfied black masses, who, being born with a
cause, needed only a leader. A New England journalist correctly
assesses Muhammad's timeliness as a leader for the disprivileged:

Muhammad cannot be laughed at as Father Divine has been. Muham-
mad's movement, with its promises of swiftly approaching social and
economic superiority for the Negro race, has captured the imagina-
tion of a segment of the suppressed and inarticulate Negro masses as
few things have since Marcus Garvey. . . ,13

Muhammad's first and most crucial task is to keep the
Movement a movement rather than permit it to become an insti-
tution. This does not mean that the Muslims must forsake struc-
ture and direction; on the contrary, they have one of the most
effective organizational structures to be seen outside the military.
But to lure the masses, they must seem to be going somewhere,
not settling down. They must reflect and mobilize the masses'
own dissatisfaction and urgency, building these into the corporate
identity. A successful mass movement is always arriving, but
never quite arrives.

Muhammad is not unaware of the frustrations and the free-
floating hostilities which are the corollaries of America's caste
system, and he will continue to use these as capital in his program
to recruit 5 million Negroes by the end of 1964. This is, to be
sure, an ambitious undertaking; but it is well to remember that
only Billy Graham has attracted and converted more people in
recent years than has Elijah Muhammad, Messenger of Allah.

Lures for the True Believer

To clinch the conversion of those true believers who ap-
proach the Movement in simple curiosity, Muhammad offers the
lure of personal rebirth. The true believer who becomes a Muslim

Reaching for the Masses 109

casts off at last his old self and takes on a new identity. He
changes his name, his religion, his homeland, his "natural" lan-
guage, his moral and cultural values, his very purpose in living.
He is no longer a Negro, so long despised by the white man that
he has come almost to despise himself. Now he is a Black Man —
divine, ruler of the universe, different only in degree from Allah
Himself. He is no longer discontent and baffled, harried by social
obloquy and a gnawing sense of personal inadequacy. Now he is
a Muslim, bearing in himself the power of the Black Nation and
its glorious destiny. His new life is not an easy one: it demands
unquestioning faith, unrelenting self-mastery, unremitting hatred.
He may have to sacrifice his family and friends, his trade or pro-
fession, if they do not serve his new-found cause. But he is not
alone, and he now knows why his life matters. He has seen the
truth, and the truth has set him free.

When he has seen the light and has decided to join the Move-
ment, the potential convert is made to pass through a number of
barriers before he is admitted. First he is given a copy of the
following letter, which he himself must copy by hand:

Address

City and State

Date

Mr. IV. F. Muhammad
4847 So. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago 15, Illinois

Dear Savior Allah, Our Deliverer:

I have been attending the teachings of Islam by one of your
Ministers, two or three times. 1 believe in It, and I bear witness that
there is no God but Thee, and that Muhammad is Thy Servant and
Apostle. I desire to reclaim my Own. Please give me my Original
name. My slave name is as follows:

Name

Address

City and State

The applicant's letter is sent to Chicago, where it is scrutinized.
If it contains any errors, it is returned and must be recopied cor-
rectly. If the letter is perfect, the applicant receives a question-
naire concerning his marital status and dependents. When this

110 Reaching for the Masses

and other forms have been completed and approved, the convert
enters his new life as a member of the Black Nation of Islam.

To commemorate his rebirth, the convert drops his last name
and is known simply by his first name and the letter X. To facili-
tate identification among Muslims having the same first name and
belonging to the same temple, numbers are prefixed to the X.
Thus the first man named John to join the temple is named John
X; the second becomes John 2X; and so on. Some temples have
gone as high as X to the "17th power"! At a later date, Muham-
mad may grant the convert a new — that is, an "original" — sur-
name, such as Shabazz.

The symbol X has a double meaning: implying "ex," it
signifies that the Muslim is no longer what he was; and as "X," it
signifies an unknown quality or quantity. It at once repudiates
the white man's name and announces the rebirth of Black Man,
endowed with a set of qualities the white man does not know.
"In short," Malcolm X explains, " 'X' is for mystery. The mystery
confronting the Negro as to who he was before the white man
made him a slave and put a European label on him. That mystery
is now resolved. But 'X' is also for the mystery confronting the
white man as to what the Negro has become." That mystery will
be resolved only when the teachings of Elijah Muhammad have
been received by enough Negroes to counter "three hundred years
of systematic brainwashing by the white man." When the Lost
Nation of Islam in the West has learned its true identity, has
gained a realistic appreciation of its past accomplishments and
has seen the "truth about the white man," then the white man
will see the Negro in a new light — "and he will have no reason to
rejoice."

Most Muslims also retain their "slave" surnames for use in
such pragmatic affairs as signing checks. On these occasions,
however, the surname is always preceded by an X to indicate that
the Muslim repudiates it. On other occasions, Muslims may use
the surname Shabazz. For example, when Malcolm X toured
Egypt and several other Moslem countries in Africa and Asia in
the summer of 1959, he traveled as Malik Shabazz "so that my
brothers in the East would recognize me as one of them." If he
had used his "European" name (Malcolm Little), he explained,

Reaching for the Masses 1 1 1

he would have been rejected as an imposter or ridiculed for re-
taining that symbol of the white man's ownership.

This change of name is, of course, only the most outward
token of rebirth. Perhaps the deepest change promised — and
delivered — is the release of energies that had been dammed or
buried in the old personality. This release may account in part
for the regeneration of criminals, alcoholics and narcotic addicts
which is a hallmark of the Movement. At the other extreme, it is
often apparent in a change from gentle bewilderment to dogmatic
and barely leashed hostility. "When I was in the Pacific," said a
Muslim veteran of World War II, "I prayed to God every day that
He would not let me die in the jungle, fighting some Japanese who
had never done anything to me. I was a Christian then. Now I
pray to Allah to let me live to help my people find out who their
real enemies are, right here in America."

Recruitment

In pursuit of his goal to make Muslims out of Negro Chris-
tians and the unchurched, Muhammad has an ambitious program
of recruitment. His ministers go into jails and penitentiaries, pool
halls and bars, barbershops and drugstores to talk about Islam.
They invade the college campuses, the settlement houses and the
YMCAs. Young Muslim brothers pass out literature in front of
the Negro Christian churches on Sunday morning, inviting the
Christians to attend lectures at the Muslim temples in the after-
noon. They speak from street corners and in parks, and they
distribute literature wherever large crowds of Negroes are gath-
ered. Invariably, the proselytizers are young, personable, urbane
and well-dressed men of confidence and conviction.

It is a Muslim boast that although the Negro intellectual
will be hardest to reach ("he has been brainwashed more thor-
oughly than any of the rest of us"), he will ultimately have no
choice other than to embrace Islam. He can never be more than
marginally acceptable to the white man, so "he will have nobody
to lead and no one to honor him when the common people have
all become Muslims." Muhammad himself has a sort of calculated
patience with the Negro upper classes. He regards them as doubly

112 Reaching for the Masses

cursed: "they have stayed in the white man's schools too long,
learning nothing of themselves," and they are fervid in their
"hopes that the white man is going to change and treat them like
men instead of boys." Malcolm X is more philosophical: "The
American Black Man has worked hard to accomplish something
and to be somebody. The whole system was against him, but some
made it to a point where the white man will show some isolated
individuals a little respect; not much, but more than he shows the
rest of us. That man isn't going to join us until the white man is
more respectful of us than of him."14

In their proselytizing, the Muslims carefully select their
approach and their language — and often their speaker — to match
the particular audience in mind. For example, Muhammad's
newspaper column, formerly in the Pittsburgh Courier and now in
the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, is aimed at a lower-class reader-
ship. It is filled with biblical eschatology, numerology and "mys-
tery," all to the embarrassment and shame of the educated classes.
However, the pitch here is being made not to the educated classes
but to the masses, who are successfully attracted by such tech-
niques. Inside the brotherhood these exotic elements are de-
emphasized, and more practical concerns are introduced.

When the Muslim is called upon to confront a highly critical
audience, the whole panoply of the occult is usually discarded,
except when it is needed to protect the speaker or the Movement
against too close examination. In the privacy of his home, Mr.
Muhammad is not only "rational," but gracious and friendly as
well. He does not greet his guests with "As-salaam-alaikum" un-
less they happen to be Muslims. There are no guards anywhere
about the house, and none of the physical trappings of the Move-
ment is in evidence. Conversation is at a level consistent with his
appraisal of the visitor. To be sure, Muhammad has an uncamou-
flaged hostility against the white man, but this hostility does not
dominate his private conversation. The Messenger's concern is
more likely to center around the Black Man's economic plight.
On the other hand, he may become totally incomprehensible about
any matter he does not wish to discuss, usually calling upon
"Allah" in answer to any questions which might put him at a
disadvantage or prematurely disclose his plans.

Reaching for the Masses 113

The same is true of Malcolm X, who has been characterized
as "whip-smart" 15 and is certainly able to think on his feet under
adverse conditions. Despite his conversational adroitness, or per-
haps because of it, Malcolm will take refuge behind any convenient
obfuscation rather than to allow himself to be trapped into saying
more than he thinks expedient. If he does not invoke Allah, he
will refer the insistent prober to Mr. Muhammad — who will prob-
ably invoke Allah.

The Muslims boast of a considerable amount of professional
talent, especially in the area of musical entertainment. Minister
Louis X of Boston is perhaps not a typical example, but he does
illustrate the emphasis upon the performing arts which are useful
in attracting young Negroes into the Muslim fold. The rather
handsome and personable minister plays the violin well and is
accomplished on several other instruments. As a calypso singer,
he was commanding five to six hundred dollars a week in some of
the better night clubs before he renounced Christianity and became
a Muslim. Since then he has performed only under the aegis of
Islam. He has written and directed two stage productions, Orgena
and The Trial, both propaganda pieces designed to show the
cupidity of the white man and the depths to which the Negro has
fallen in trying to be like him. In The Trial, as we have seen, the
white man finally pays for his crimes against humanity, and the
Black Nation is restored to its former moral and cultural excel-
lence. Louis has also written and recorded several popular Muslim
songs, the best known of which are White Man's Heaven Is Black
Man's Hell! and Look At My Chains!

Dramatic productions, songs and other such entertainment
are effective recruiting devices. "People who can put on a drama
like that — and who wrote it themselves are not just 'everyday'
folks," a Boston taxi driver remarked. But Muhammad does not
make entertainment ability the chief attraction of his Movement.
Indeed, he is careful to emphasize that the Negro has already
done too much singing and dancing, when he should have been
giving his attention to more serious matters like factories and
supermarkets. Apart from the public meetings and publications,
a good deal of recruiting is done in jails and prisons, among men
and women whose resentment against society increases with each

114 Reaching for the Masses

day of imprisonment. Here their smoldering hatred against the
white man builds up to the point of explosion. But Muhammad's
ministers are trained to prevent any such release; they are adept
at channeling aggression and hostility into a kind of leakproof
reservoir for future use. No act of violence or retaliation against
the white man is permitted. Instead, Muslims who join the sect
while in prison invariably improve in behavior and outlook. Every
Muslim must respect constituted authority — no matter what the
authority may be. This is one of the cardinal rules of membership
in the sect.

The black prisoner is reminded that he is in an institution
administered by whites, guarded by whites, built by whites. Even
the chaplains are white, "to continue to force upon you the poison-
ous doctrine that you are blessed by being persecuted." The judge
who tried him, the jury who heard his case, the officers who
arrested him — all were white. Can he, then, be justly imprisoned?

If in fact you did steal, from whom did you steal? Only the white
man has anything, and if you stole from him, you got but a fraction
of what he owes you. Did you kill? If you killed a white man, they
murder us at will. They decorate their trees with the bodies of our
people. Or they kill us by "law," but they cannot enforce the same
"law" to protect us or let us vote.16

If prisoners have committed crimes against other black men, they
are told they committed these "unnatural acts" out of frustration
and the inability to "see who the real devil is." "You may have
killed your black brother with your hand, but in your heart you
have tried to kill your true tormentor."

When the prisoner is discharged, he is "not wanted by the
Christian churches who teach love and forgiveness," but a ready-
made fellowship awaits him at the Muslim temple. The new
brother is welcomed and immediately made to feel a part of the
group. A job is found for him, usually in one of the Muslim
enterprises, and in a short time he is indistinguishable from any
other Muslim. The routine of work, coupled with the obligations
of the temple, leave him little time for regression or for any con-
tacts with the criminal element.

Occasionally, a man or woman will join the Muslims "to
keep out of trouble" or to find help in trying to overcome addic-

Reaching for the Masses 115

tion to dope or alcohol. One woman in Milwaukee said that she
joined "because I was tired of hating myself every time I looked
in the mirror."

Muhammad's reclamation program promises a kind of moral
and social perfectionism, which is available to all who adopt
Islam. In his public addresses, he chides the Negro community
for its juvenile delinquency, which is "caused by parental immor-
ality" and "rips apart the seams of the Christian society." In
Islam, echoes Malcolm X, "we don't have any delinquency, either
juvenile or adult, and if Mr. Muhammad is given a chance he will
clean up the slums and the ghettos — something all the leaders and
the social workers and the policemen put together have not been
able to do."

The Muslims visualize the reclamation of thousands of
Negroes who, through ignorance, despair and defeat, have found
themselves in the gutter or in jail. They have had some impressive
successes in rehabilitating certain categories of social outcasts,
including narcotic addicts and alcoholics. Muhammad operates
on the premise that "knowledge of self" and of the "truth about
the white man" — when tied in with a constructive program, such
as building the "Black Nation" — is sufficient to reclaim the most
incorrigible. "By nature," the Muslims are taught, "you are
divine." Their social tragedies are caused by the white devil's
"tricknology," but truth and hard work will soon make them free.

Visit to a Temple

The real recruitment is done in the temples, for there the
import of Muhammad's message may be heard at best advantage.
The temple is typically located in the area of densest concentration
in the black ghetto. In this way, the bars, pool halls and chicken
shacks — all crowded with potential converts — are readily acces-
sible to the proselytizing Muslim brothers. Conversely, the temple
is in a neighborhood familiar and convenient to most of those to
whom its basic appeal is directed. On Wednesday nights the
clean-shaven, dark-suited Muslims may be seen posted near the
liquor stores or canvassing the bars and cafes, "fishing for the
dead" — that is, inviting the most lost of the Lost Nation to repair

116 Reaching for the Masses

to the nearby temple to learn the truth about themselves and their
future.

On Sunday mornings the crusading brothers may station
themselves outside the Christian churches — High-Church or apos-
tolic, cathedral or store-front, it doesn't matter to the self-confident
Muslims, for the message they have is ultimately intended for the
entire Black Nation. They march silently up and down in front
of the churches, passing out handbills inviting the Christians to
come to the Muslim temple that afternoon "to hear the truth."
The "pickets" are polite and friendly, quietly dressed and soft-
spoken. But most impressive of all is their self-assurance, their
utter confidence in their "program for the Black Man which does
not require you to love those who do not love you."

The temple itself may be a vacant store or a lodge hall, if
the Muslims have but newly organized or if the Movement has not
yet caught on in that vicinity. Where the size of the congregation
warrants, the Muslims have typically bought abandoned Jewish
temples or Christian churches as the whites have fled from the
changing neighborhood. Occasionally the nascent Muslim organi-
zations meet in Negro churches or even in funeral chapels.

Arriving at the temple, the new visitor may discover that it
has a number rather than a name. A large sign across the front
of the building or a signboard on the temple lawn may proclaim
it to be, say, MUHAMMAD'S TEMPLE OF ISLAM No. 5. However,
because law enforcement and other agencies have shown increas-
ing interest in the Movement in recent times, the wily Muslim
leader has now stopped numbering his temples in order to keep
the strength of the Movement secret.

The lawn bulletin, as in Christian churches, announces the
speaker for the day. Nationally popular speakers other than
Muhammad include Malcolm X of New York, Louis X of Boston
and Wallace Muhammad, the Messenger's son, who leads the
Philadelphia temple. Whenever a program of unusual importance
is held at a local temple, it is supported by busloads of Muslims
from all nearby cities and from national headquarters in Chicago.
At a rally held by the Atlanta Temple in September 1960, Muslim
caravans came from as far away as Boston and Los Angeles. This
kind of mobility promotes a rather widespread cohesiveness within

Reaching for the Masses 117

the brotherhood; most of the ministers eventually become known
to all other ministers and to congregations scattered across the
country.

The Negro visitor is welcomed at the entrance to the temple
by a committee of the dark-suited brethren. The white visitor is
politely but firmly turned away, with an explanation that "this is
a meeting for the victims of the white man and not for the white
man himself." It may be further explained that what will be said
in the temple "may sound offensive" to white people and that
white visitors who become offended may find themselves in danger;
consequently "it will be better for all concerned if only black
people attend."

Negroes are readily admitted and are shown into the temple
with elaborate courtesy and ceremony. In an anteroom just off
the sanctuary, a Muslim sister waits to record the visitors' names
and addresses, which are then added to the temple's mailing list.
Following this registration, the visitor is asked to submit to "a
little ceremony we always go through." The "little ceremony" is,
in fact, an elaborate and systematic search for concealed weapons.
All pocket knives, nail files and any other instruments capable of
inflicting serious injury are taken from the visitor and checked in
a plastic bag, along with lip rouge, chewing gum, cigarettes and
all other "articles of defilement." The visitor is asked to open his
wallet and remove his money. Both the wallet and the money are
then examined, but the owner is permitted to retain these.

Two Muslims are assigned to go over each new arrival, and
they do it with a thoroughness that would delight the heart of a
police sergeant. Pockets must be turned inside out; coat lapels,
collars and trouser cuffs are all given attention. The trouser legs
must be raised to show that nothing is concealed in the socks.
While the visitor's arms are held aloft, a Muslim brother places
his outspread hands on either side of the neck and in one continu-
ous sweep carefully trails them down the sides of the body to the
ankles. The armpits and the inside of a man's legs are given close
attention. Women are given similar treatment in a room set aside
for that purpose.

The Muslims are remarkably adept in the business of the
"ceremony." The whole thing takes only about a minute and is

118 Reaching for the Masses

done with as little inconvenience and embarrassment to the be-
wildered newcomer as possible. On special occasions, such as
when the Messenger or Malcolm X is speaking, a double line of
perhaps fifty to sixty Muslim brothers is assigned to this detail,
thus enabling several thousand people to be "cleared" and seated
within an hour or two preceding the meeting. At the big meetings
the paramilitary FOI is in charge, and Muslims as well as non-
Muslims are searched.

Once the visitor has been cleared, he is escorted into the
sanctuary by one of the Muslims. The entrance to this room is
typically guarded on the inside by two members of the FOI, who
stand, one on each side of the doorway, facing the front of the
room. If there is a double entrance (as in most churches), guards
are posted at each. The entrances near the chancel at the front of
the room are similarly guarded. There may also be two guards
flanking the speaker, one on each side; or there may be a guard
opposite the front row of seats on each side of the room. The
escort will lead the visitor to the front of the room, making certain
that all seats on the front row are filled first, and so on with the
succeeding rows. Men are seated to the right, women to the left.
There is no mixed seating whatsoever.

Before the minister enters to deliver the main lecture for the
day, one of the brothers may instruct the audience in a Muslim
prayer or in the understanding of certain Arabic phrases. The
prayer posture may be taught — palms upward, face to the East —
and its meaning explained.

There is a flurry of excitement when the minister enters. He
walks rapidly to the lectern and bows slightly, with his palms up
and slightly extended. Then he smiles at his congregation and
greets them in Arabic: "As-salaam alaikum!" ("Peace be unto
you!") The greeting is returned in unison: "Wa-alaikum salaam!"
("And unto you be peace!") This exchange is usually made three
times, after which the minister launches immediately into his
address, which is the heart of the service and usually lasts two or
three hours. Unlike the traditional Christian sermon, it is not
confined to a single topic each week. Instead, the minister at-
tempts every week to present the entire gamut of Muhammad's
teachings. He speaks almost without pause and is interrupted

Reaching for the Masses 119

only by the changing of the guard — a ceremony in which, at inter-
vals, the guards at the rear of the hall march forward, exchange
phrases in Arabic with the guards down front and then exchange
stations with them.

Throughout the lecture, the audience is attentive and earnest.
It is eager and seems enraptured by its exclusive possession of the
truth; yet it is always restrained. There are no "happy" people in
the congregation, and the foot-thumping, head-wagging-amen
stereotype of the store-front Negro churchgoer is conspicuously
absent. There is no singing and no "shouting." Emotional dis-
plays are limited to frequent ejaculations of "That's right!" when
the minister scores a point upon which there is wide agreement.
Often, the minister asks a rhetorical question for emotional effect.
He may wonder, for example, "Now what do you think would
happen if you tried to do some of the things the Constitution says
you have a right to do?" At this there is an uneasy rumble of
snickering, interspersed with the cynical response: "Now that's a
good question, Brother Minister! That's a good question!"

While the minister lectures, money receptacles are in con-
tinuous circulation, and the challenge to "support your own" is
insistently urged by young ushers moving among the audionce.
The receptacles are not inconspicuous: they are plastic waste-
baskets or large brown paper bags. Such collections are a recent
innovation. The Muslim brothers formerly took no public offer-
ings and announced proudly: "Islam takes care of its own." Now
they explain that, since Muhammad has become well-known and
"his aims and integrity are established," the public can be per-
mitted to contribute toward his work, "especially the proposed
building of an Islamic Center in Chicago."

The minister nearly always begins his lecture by writing
several Arabic phrases on a blackboard, explaining that Arabic
is the original language of the Black Man and that he must begin
to relearn the language of which the white man has deprived him.
The first phrase is the Muslim greeting: As-salaam alaikum. The
proper response is then written and explained: Wa-alaikum
salaam. "It is proper," the minister explains, "to begin the study
of Islam and the worship of Allah in the presence of peace. Islam

120 Reaching for the Masses

is the religion of peace, and Muslims should be at peace with each
other and, insofar as is possible, with all others."

Peace having been disposed of, the minister launches into a
long discussion of the primacy of the Black Man and his remark-
able accomplishments. To this end, he cites pertinent passages
from the Islamic Quran, the Old Testament and other literature,
as well as the writings of Muhammed himself. The hearers are
reminded that their earlier knowledge of themselves and their past
has been derived from the spurious teachings of the white man,
who has "prostituted truth and defiled history to serve his own
ends." Black Men must no longer accept the white man's teach-
ings at face value. They must search out the facts and make
intelligent judgments for themselves. The ministers will help
them, for "the Messenger knows the truth about the white man"
and he has taught his ministers well.

Often the minister reads passages from well-known histori-
cal, sociological or anthropological works and finds in them incon-
spicuous references to the Black Man's true history in the world.
Black Men in Asia and Africa were enjoying advanced civilizations
when the white man was eating his meat raw in the caves of
Europe. Yet the whites, through their control of informational
media (including the black preachers), have succeeded in making
the so-called Negroes accept themselves as inferior.

Black Men sat on the thrones of Egypt and Ethiopia, fought
beside the Romans in conquering the savages of Britain, discov-
ered America long before Columbus and then piloted the ship on
which Columbus sailed. Black Men ruled Spain and Southern
Europe, reigned as popes in the Eternal City of Rome and built
great civilizations on the west coast of Africa. They produced
many Moslem scholars of whom the white Christians profess to
be ignorant, though the white civilization has stolen much knowl-
edge from them. But the whites have taught the so-called Negro
nothing of all this, and he has a mental block against searching
out the information for himself. The so-called Negro doesn't want
to know about his own history; he wants to know about the white
man's history. He has been taught that his own history will only
deposit him in the jungle, whereas the white man's history begins
with Socrates dying nobly to illustrate a moral principle.

Reaching for the Masses 121

Occasionally the minister chides the audience for its skepti-
cism: "I know you don't believe me because I happen to be a
Black Man. Well, you can look it up in a book I'm going to tell
you about that was written by a white man." He then reads off
references, which his hearers are challenged to check for them-
selves. A single documented statement, however, may become the
basis of a wide range of generalized non sequiturs. The fact that
a North Carolina slaveholder had an Arabic-speaking Moslem
slave of unusual mathematical ability may be offered as evidence
that all slaves brought to America were Moslem, Arabic-speaking
and learned.

Similarly, historical facts may be indiscriminately mingled
with myths and countermyths. The information that Aesop was
a Negro and that the great University of Sankore in Timbuktu
sent its professors to lecture in the universities of Cairo, Granada
and Morocco at a time when Europe was just emerging from
the Dark Ages — allegations easily documented from standard
sources17 — may be interspersed among claims that "all history is
written in advance by twenty-four Black Scientists" under a
twenty-fifth Black Man who serves as "Judge," or that the tribe
of Shabazz (to which all Black Men belong) are the "Original
Men" who "came with the earth sixty-six trillion years ago."

The minister next turns his attention to the evil and divisive
influences of the white man and to the white man's equally repul-
sive religion. The white man has come but lately to the table of
civilization. "When the black princes of Asia and Africa were
wearing silks and plotting the stars, the white man was crawling
around on his all-fours in the caves of Europe. The reason why
the white man keeps dogs in the house today, and sleeps with
them and rides them about in cars is that he slept with the dogs
in the caves of Europe and he has never broken the habit." 18

The audience is urged to give the Christian religion "back
to the white man," for it is a religion of slavery and death.
Negroes must also "give the white man back the names he has
labeled you with," for these are badges of slavery. "If a China-
man tells you his name is 'Whitfield,' you know there's something
wrong somewhere. Well, there's also something wrong about a
Black Man named 'Jones'."19 Wherever the white man's name is

122 Reaching for the Masses

attached to the so-called Negro, it is a symbol of possession.
"Every time you sign your name you tell the world you're still the
white man's chattel. If your body happens to be partly free,
you're still his chattel in mind."

At this point, the minister may point to a painting which, in
most temples, hangs on the wall behind the lectern. On the right
half of the canvas are shown the symbols of Islam — the star and
crescent — and the legend "Freedom- Justice-Equality." On the
left are depicted the American flag, the Christian cross and a
Negro hanging by his neck from a tree. These three, the minister
explains, are the symbols of Christianity and what it has offered
the Black Man. But now the Black Man has a choice: Islam, or
continued abuse in subservience to the white Christians.

The men are reminded that they have been helpless even
when their homes have been invaded. Resistance, even to protect
their families, has meant death. Further, their economic condi-
tions are so contrived that they must send their womenfolk out
to work in the homes and offices of Christian white men. This
is no accident: the white man controls the economy, and he knows
the Black Man is at his mercy. He deliberatly "castrates" the
Black Man by paying his wife higher wages, so that the male is
no longer head of his family. The wife then comes to despise her
husband and to admire the white man, who is economically inde-
pendent. And the white man not only employs the Black Man's
women but proceeds "forthwith to send them home to their black
husbands with blue-eyed babies." "These same robbers," says
Muhammad, "disgrace and corrupt them with all kinds of diseases
besides spotting up [their] children like the animal family."20

We stand by with folded arms, cowards to the core, and allow the
human brute ... to take our women ... the most priceless gift of a
nation. . . . We cannot produce a pure, chaste nation with a "free-
for-all" woman. If we [cannot] protect her from the human beast's
advances, we should kill ourselves and our women.21

Christianity is dealt with summarily. It is considered a re-
ligion of ignominy and disgrace for the Black Man, but of great
convenience and practicality for the white man. For the white
man neither believes its teachings nor makes any attempt to prac-
tice them. The white man wants the so-called Negro to accept

Reaching for the Masses 123

Christianity and live according to its teachings; but he then laughs
at the so-called Negro for being a fool.

"Love thy neighbor;" I have yet to meet one white man that loved
his neighbor. . . . "Thou shalt not kill;" I have yet to meet such a
Christian. . . . Where is a good Christian among this race?22

. . . you fear and love [the white Christians] though you are even
disgraced, beaten and killed by them, from your ministers of their
slavery religion . . . down to the lowly, ignorant man in the mud.
You have made yourselves the most foolish people on earth by loving
and following after the ways of Slavemasters, whom Allah has
revealed to me to be none other than real devils, and that their
so-called Christianity is not His religion, nor the religion of Jesus or
any other prophet of Allah (God).23

The audience is encouraged to disavow a religion which
worships "a dead Jesus and his dead disciples," for such behavior
distracts them from the business of trying to live in this world.
"The white man has 'given you Jesus' while he has robbed you
blind." Heaven is right here, and we must try to share in it now,
rather than after death. Jesus has not "gone anywhere."

No one after death has ever gone any place but where they were
carried. There is no heaven or hell other than on earth for you and
me, and Jesus was no exception. His body is still ... in Palestine
and will remain there.24

With this transition, the minister next gives his attention to the
Messenger's economic program. The hearers are chided for thrift-
lessness, conspicuous consumption and living beyond their means.
Such self-indulgence will not build the Black Nation. The white
man still owns the so-called Negro, because the white man owns
the factories, the land, the houses and everything else needed for
survival. When he decides to kill a Negro, he does not shoot him
— except for amusement. "All he needs to do is to deny the
Negro a job, and he will soon be just as dead." The Negro, in an
attempt to protect himself against economic reprisal, adapts a
posture of servility. "The so-called Negro's principles are always
in pawn to the Slavemaster. The white man can make him bark
and roll over any day in the week!" He is no more than a "free
slave," for he dares not assert his manhood, no matter what indig-
nities are heaped upon him or what atrocities are directed his way.

124 Reaching for the Masses

"Mr. Muhammad has an economic program," the minister
continues, "which, if followed, will soon free the Black Man and
make him equal to the other nations of the world." But the Black
Man must be prepared to work:

Many of us, the so-called Negroes, today are so lazy that we are
willing to suffer anything rather than go to work. It is true that God
has come to sit us in heaven, but not a heaven wherein we won't
have to work.25

Integration comes under heavy attack. It is anathema to the
Movement, and the minister is trained to denounce it with especial
vehemence. He may read from Muhammad's The Supreme Wis-
dom, in which the Messenger condemns integration as a kind of
social opiate.

The Slavemaster's children are doing everything in their power to
prevent the so-called Negroes from accepting their own God and
salvation, by putting on a great show of false love and friendship.

This is being done through "integration," as it is called; that is, so-
called Negroes and whites mixing together such as in schools,
churches, and even intermarriage. . . . The poor slaves really think
they are entering a condition of heaven with their former slaveholders,
but it will prove to be their doom.

Today ... we are living in a time of great separation between the
blacks and white. . . . The so-called Negroes must now return to their
own; nothing else will solve the problem.26

The integration controversy is presented as a private quarrel
between Northern and Southern whites:

The Northern whites don't really care about the Negroes, but they
don't like it because the crackers in the South disgrace the country
and embarrass the nation. They can't keep out of the Black Man's
bed, and they have to keep lynching Negroes to try to keep it covered
up. Now today, this makes for bad international relations. But the
Southern cracker isn't going to clean himself up and stay on his side
of town just to please the Yankees or to put the country in a better
light. He can't. He was born a dog, and he'll be a dog. But he'll get
up on Sunday morning and look pious in his pew!27

The minister denounces integration as a stratagem of the
white man to insure his survival in a world he has managed badly.

Reaching for the Masses 125

The white man's time is up, and he knows it. He has no friends
anywhere. He now hopes that by integrating with the rising Black
Man, he can avoid paying for the long list of crimes he has perpe-
trated against humanity. So he has undertaken to "sweetheart"
with the only people who are stupid enough to listen, the dupes
he has trained to love him.

If the so-called American Negro were not so much in love
with his deceivers, he would be preparing to be master now, rather
than continuing to be satisfied as a free slave. For the white man's
doom is sure.

The minister then speaks again of Islam, the religion of
"peace, justice and equality." It is the only religion, he asserts,
in which the Black Man in America — or anywhere else in the
world — can find communion in brotherhood. Islam is hateful to
the white man because it "equalizes" him, and "the white man
would rather be dead than to be equal." But there are as many
professing believers in Islam alone as there are white men in the
entire world, and all non-white men everywhere are by nature
Muslims, whether they profess it or not. The white race is thus
hopelessly outnumbered by the Muslim brotherhood, which
stretches across the world.

The Holy Quran of Islam is the "book which makes a dis-
tinction between the God of the righteous and the God of evil."
This is the book which the Slavemaster has willfully kept from the
blacks in America, for it contains all knowledge: "the Guidance
of Light and Truth and of Wisdom and Judgment."

This book the Holy Quran Sharrieff, pulls the cover off the covered
and shows the nation for the first time that which deceived 90 per-
cent of the people of the earth without knowledge of the deceiver.28

At present, the Holy Quran must be taught by the leaders, but all
Muslims should learn Arabic (which is taught at some temples)
so that they may read it for themselves in the original. Meanwhile,
only those translations approved by Muhammad should be used.29
Near the end of the meeting and at the conclusion of the
minister's lecture, the congregation is asked whether it agrees with
what has been said. Any who do not agree are asked to state the
points of disagreement, so that the minister may try to provide
"the clarification necessary to unity." If the minister cannot pro-

126 Reaching for the Masses

vide a satisfactory answer, he promises to relay the question to
the Messenger himself for resolution. No questions or problems
are deemed beyond the capacities of the Messenger, for "it is be-
cause of his wisdom and insight that he has been chosen leader of
the Black Nation."

When all questions raised from the floor by "those not yet
returned to Islam" have been spoken to, the minister invites those
who believe what they have heard and who have the courage of
their convictions to come forward and declare for Islam. There
are rarely more than fifteen or twenty in any one meeting; but in
a three-hour lecture before 8,500 persons in Los Angeles' Olympic
Auditorium, "Mr. Elijah Muhammad . . . persuaded more than
143 Christians to renounce Christianity and embrace Islam."30

Those who elect to join are warmly welcomed by the Muslim
brotherhood and are assigned to classes of instruction. Those
who are impressed, but are not yet willing to separate themselves
from the Christian tradition, are urged to continue attending the
public meetings, in the expectation that they will eventually over-
come this hesitation. The merely curious and those suspected of
being "stooges for the FBI" are not encouraged to return.

Schools and the Center

A powerful and long-range recruiting device of the Move-
ment is its parochial schools, with their massive emphasis on
education about the Black Man — his resplendent past, his divine
nature, his triumphant future. Many lower-class Negroes find this
approach, for all its exaggerations, a welcome change from the
white-oriented teaching in nearly all public schools. The desire to
have their children "learn something about themselves" is sur-
prisingly strong, particularly now that the new African states have
gained their independence. These parents are also impressed with
the schools as irrefutable evidence of the Muslims' determination
to free themselves from all white influence and to prepare their
youth for roles as reclaimers of the Black Man's heritage. Finally,
the schools have important status-value as "private schools" for
the low-income families, who could never hope to afford the
luxury of ordinary private schools.

Reaching for the Masses 127

There are now two active parochial schools (known as Uni-
versities of Islam) in Chicago and Detroit, and plans have been
made to have a school attached to each temple. The University
of Islam in Chicago includes grades one to twelve and is accredited
by the agencies which rate the city's public schools. It is housed
in a modern building and has an enrollment of about three hun-
dred students. The University of Islam in Detroit has about one
hundred students. In both the Chicago and the Detroit schools,
the "Future Leaders of Islam" attend classes fifty weeks a year.
Both are staffed with Christian as well as Muslim personnel.
Efforts are now under way to establish schools at other large
temples, but securing teachers has proved to be a severe problem.

In both schools Arabic is taught from the third grade on,
for a mastery of his language is held to be the Black Man's key to
a knowledge of his past and to acceptability in the universal
brotherhood of Islam. Much is made of the fact that Muhammad's
young son, Akbar, a graduate of the University of Islam in Chi-
cago, acted as interpreter for his father's party much of the time
during their recent tour of Islamic countries in Africa and Asia.

The Detroit school dates back to the early years of the
Movement, and it has been a constant thorn in the side of the
Detroit police and school officials. In 1934, Muhammad was
found guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and
given six months probation when he refused to withdraw his
children from the University of Islam and enroll them in the city's
public schools. At about the same time, when the city attempted
to interfere with the operation of the school, the Muslims began
"a severe riot" in which the Muslims "tried to storm the police
headquarters. Fearful of race riots, the judges of the recorder's
office released with suspended sentences almost all of the riot-
ers."31 But the trouble continued:

Several . . . cult members were in and out of court on ... charges,
most resulting from their insistence on sending their children to cult
schools. "Universities of Islam" were operated in various places
around Detroit for more than a decade as the Board of Education
sought to close them. . . . The school system finally decided to "join"
the Muslims instead of fighting them. . . . Cult leaders, working
through their attorney ... got together with the State Departmen of
Public Instruction representatives to work out an approved private

128 Reaching for the Masses

school for the cult. The court cases were dropped on the assumption
the school had been approved. . . ,32

The school was closed again in August 1959, after "a State
Police sergeant, an agent of the State Department of Public In-
struction, two Buildings and Safety Engineering Department in-
spectors, a Health Department investigator, and a Detroit Fire
Department inspector poked through the musty, crumbling former
theatre building. . . ,"83 A few weeks later, the school was again
in operation.

The Muslims place a high premium upon special education
for wives and mothers, and their Muslim Girls' training and
General Civilization Class is an effective means of drawing Negro
women into the Movement. The MGT, as it is generally known,
concentrates primarily on the art of homemaking. It meets on
week nights at the local temples, and the women are "taught how
to sew, cook, keep house, rear their children, care for their hus-
bands, and how to behave at home and abroad." High moral
behavior is an absolute requirement, for "a Muslim can rise no
higher than his women." The MGT also has a Junior Division for
girls aged fifteen to nineteen.

Perhaps the most ambitious undertaking Muhammad has
announced for the immediate future is the building of an Islamic
Center in Chicago. The center is to include "a mosque in which
to pray ... an educational institution in which to enlighten our
youth, a library in which to deepen their knowledge and under-
standing, a hospital in which to cure the sick and strengthen the
healthy."34 The initial cost of the center is put at $20 million,
and funds are solicited from all who attend the various meetings
of the Muslims, on the promise that the facilities of the center will
not be restricted to Muslims.

The Muslims have already acquired a five-acre tract on
Chicago's far South Side for which they paid a reputed $150,000.
When residents in the area became convinced that the Muslims
really intend to build the center, they sought to have the tract
condemned for a public park. The Muslims countered by hiring
Chicago's famous civil rights attorney, Robert Ming, to represent
them; and an angry Muhammad lashed out at the Negroes trying
to block his program in terms reminscent of Garvey:

Reaching for the Masses 129

The short-sighted so-called Negroes seem to rather have a play-
ground to sit, eat and sleep on [and] to be criticized by the civilized
people of earth as the laziest and most foolish people of all. ... I warn
you my people who are trying to oppose me and my followers — to
the joy of our enemies, (the devils) by our Allah, all of your efforts
shall fail ... if we are forced by the city to give it up or sell, by the
help of our God, Allah — we will most certainly retaliate; this we are
assured of.35

Mr. Muhammad Speaks

The Black Muslims have spared no effort to contact the
Negro masses through every available medium of mass communi-
cation. Wherever Muhammad speaks, his audiences are num-
bered in the thousands; and since 1959 his rallies have been in-
creasingly frequent. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington and
other cities across the country have turned out impressive crowds
to hear the Messenger. Nowhere have fewer than four thousand
persons gathered to hear his call for "a separate place for the
Black Nation." Crowds of eight to ten thousand are the rule.

For several years, Muhammad's column in the Pittsburgh
Courier attracted wide attention among Negroes and stirred a
lively debate between those who supported his views and those
who were indignant that he was granted space in the paper. Dur-
ing his tenure as a Courier columnist, no other single writer drew
as many letters to the editor; and the newspaper, which had been
steadily losing readers, suddenly found its circulation increasing.
This was partially due to the fact that the Muslims took to the
street corners and the housing projects to hawk the papers — each
brother being assigned a quota. In 1959, however, the controlling
interest in the paper was bought by S. B. Fuller, a Chicago manu-
facturer, and Muhammad's column was dropped.

Subsequently the column began to appear in the weekly
Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, which has become in effect the
official Muslim organ. Since its alliance with the Muslims, the
Dispatch, which is only eight years old, has begun to publish a
regional edition in Chicago, and local offices have been opened
in other cities where there are large numbers of Muslims. The

130 Reaching for the Masses

paper is published by Sanford Alexander of Los Angeles. Ray-
mond Sharrieff, son-in-law of Muhammad and Supreme Captain
of the FOI, is in charge of its Chicago offices. The paper is sold
at all Muslim enterprises across the country, and individual Mus-
lims are given quotas to sell in the black ghettos. Its present
circulation is approximately 40,000 a week.

Malcolm X refers to the Dispatch as "the most outspoken
newspaper in America ... 100 per cent pro-black." The paper
denounces "the so-called Negro leaders," ridicules the Negro's
commitment to non-violence and passive resistance, and supports
the Black Muslims unequivocally. It says candidly:

. . . Mr. Muhammad's program . . . and the racial policy of the
Herald-Dispatch is one and the same. . . . Mr. Muhammad maintains
and the Herald-Dispatch concurs, that the salvation for the so-called
American Negro is unity of purpose . . . one goal, spiritually, eco-
nomically, and politically, such as embracing Islam, . . . building
business enterprises among the black race, supporting the Negro
businessman, learning self-respect. And above all else, [we must]
stop begging our oppressor for the crumbs from his table. Prepare
for the day when his beastlike action against the non-white popula-
tion . . . will be stopped with force.36

The feature news of each issue of the Dispatch is predomi-
nantly concerned with Muslim affairs, and the addresses of Mu-
hammad, Malcolm X and others prominent in the Movement are
given extensive coverage. Guest columns by various Muslim
ministers are featured regularly, as are stories about the activities
of local temples. Muhammad's "Economic Blueprint" is printed
in most issues. The back page is ordinarily devoted entirely to a
graphic projection of the proposed Islamic Center, plus a listing
of the Muslim temples and their addresses. Considerable space is
devoted to advertising from Muslim temples, enterprises and indi-
viduals.

News of interest to the general Negro community is also
published in the Dispatch, but relatively little space is given to
social events — an important feature in most Negro newspapers.
Some straight news pertaining to Christian churches is carried, as
is news about such organizations as the NAACP. Foreign news
is usually limited to items concerning the Afro-Asian community.

Reaching for the Masses 131

In February 1960, the Dispatch presented Elijah Muham-
mad an award on the occasion of its eighth anniversary celebra-
tion. In anticipation of the event, the Dispatch said editorially:

Mr. Muhammad has succeeded in organizing approximately one half
million so-called Negroes. ... He is uplifting fallen humanity. He
is not concerned with other races, he teaches the so-called Negro to
be pro-black. This is not teaching hate . . . because of his teachings,
his program of positive action, the Herald-Dispatch will give him the
highest Achievement Award ever given to an individual by this
publication. . . ,37

Both Christianity and Judaism come under frequent attack
from the Dispatch. While it categorically denies religious bias, it
publishes material such as this — from an editorial entitled "The
Evils of Christianity":

The Christian, the white man with a gun and a Bible in one hand and
a bottle of gin in the other . . . enslaved [the Black Man] . . . [and
is guilty of] economic oppression, lynchings, bombing of [Negro]
churches, segregation, disenfranchisement. . . . Christianity in Ger-
many used fiendish gas ovens to "scientifically" rid the world of
millions of Jews; the U. S. under Christianity performed the most
heinous crime ever committed on the planet Earth — the dropping of
the atomic bombs on the Japanese. . . ,38

The "Christian Belgians" are charged with slaughtering the Con-
golese; the "Christian French," with bombing the Algerians and
Tunisians, "supported by the Christian United States and Britain."
In a particularly bitter editorial, the Dispatch challenged its readers
as follows:

We ask Negroes: where was Ralph Bunche, the stooge of the Western
Powers when the Belgians murdered 10,000 Africans on January 4,
5, and 6, 1959? We ask the Negroes where was the United Nations
when the South Africans were shooting down Africans like flies? . . .
Where was Ralph Bunche when the British, using rockets were killing
the Africans in Kenya? . . . Russia saved Egypt in 1956. . . . Russia
ordered Israel out of the Sinai Desert ... it was Russia again who
ordered the Belgians out of the Congo. We are thankful for Russia.39

This praise of Russia, incidentally, is the Dispatch's only signifi-
cant departure from the Muslim line. Muhammad holds no brief
for any white nation, including the Soviet Union. He apparently

132 Reaching for the Masses

permits this pro-Russian slant only because it has the virtue of
discomfiting the local "Slavemasters."

Judaism, "from which Christianity spread" — the Dispatch
does not mention Islam's similar origin — is condemned for "her
brutal treatment of the Palestine Arabs who had befriended the
Jews in an hour of need." The Jews are referred to as "educated
and highly cultured," and it is emphasized that their "crimes were
conducted with the aid and sanction of the Christian countries."
All Negroes are called upon to "renounce Christianity in all its
facets, [for] Christianity ... is not for the Black Man."40

The Muslims also have an ever-increasing number of special
publications designed to attract the attention of the black masses
to Muhammad's work and teachings.

The Supreme Wisdom: Solution to the So-Called Negroes'
Problem is the hornbook of the Movement. In its fifty-six pages,
Muhammad addresses himself to such diverse topics as "The
Bible and its Teachings," "Christianity," "What Our Enemy Is
Doing," "No 'Integration,'" "Kinky Hair," "The Hog and Its
Eaters," "Heaven on Earth" and "Other Notable Aspects of
Islam." An early edition lists ten formal requirements of prac-
tice, or "Principles of Belief," including the following: "Keep up
prayer; speak the truth regardless of circumstances; keep clean
internally and externally at all times; set at liberty the captured
believer; fear no one but Allah, and kill no one whom Allah has
not ordered you to kill." The Supreme Wisdom is perhaps the
Muslims' earliest venture in publishing and has been through
several editions, but on the whole it is poorly written and poorly
organized. Not many outside the fold have seen it.

In 1959 and 1960, the Muslims launched a number of publi-
cations in keeping with their new resolve to add a million converts
to Muhammad's following by the end of 1961. One such publica-
tion was The Messenger, a magazine edited by the ubiquitous
Malcolm X and devoted to a pictorial presentation of "typical
Muslim activities." Several pages are devoted to the Muslim
schools and show the eager young faces of the Muslim children in
their classes. Other sections show Muslim women (busy with the

Reaching for the Masses 133

tasks of homemaking), the Muslims' various commercial enter-
prises and a display of newspapers headlining news about Mus-
lims. There is a feature story on "a typical Muslim family" — that
of Supreme Captain Raymond SharriefL Subsequent issues were
planned but were never published.

One issue of The Islamic News, a tabloid-sized paper, ap-
peared in July 1959. Its eight pages were mainly devoted to an
"Exclusive Verbatim Transcript of [Muhammad's] Historic Wash-
ington Speech." The issue is obviously the work of a professional
journalist, and the speech as presented is certainly not a "verbatim
transcript." This address is particularly important, however, be-
cause in it Muhammad considered himself to be tweaking the nose
of the government, which, on his previous visit to Washington
during the "lean years" of the Movement, had humiliated him and
put him in jail.

Another tabloid-sized Muslim paper, Mr. Muhammad
Speaks, bills itself as "a militant monthly dedicated to Justice for
the Black Man." This paper was launched in May 1960 and went
on sale at fifteen cents. It is devoted to the general news of
Muslim interest, including features of special interest to women.
This is probably the best publication the Muslims have, and the
hand of a professional journalist is apparent in its layout and
composition. It is published at 113 Lenox Avenue, in "The Heart
of Harlem." The photography tends to be unusually effective,
and the paper sells readily wherever it appears on the streets in
Negro neighborhoods. Venders are often stationed outside
NAACP meetings, churches and other places where large groups
of Negroes congregate.

In July 1960, a pocket-sized magazine called Salaam ap-
peared. It is essentially a picture magazine, and its first issue
featured Muhammad's trip to Mecca, the University of Islam in
Detroit and the 1960 Muslim Convention in Chicago. Salaam is
published in Philadelphia by L. Masco Young.

Another pocket-sized Muslim magazine is Mr. Muhammad
Speaks to the Blackman. It is a shallow publication, playing upon
racial feeling in such a way as to be nauseous even to some pro-
Muslims. Dan Burley, a well-known Chicago newspaperman, is

134 Reaching for the Masses

listed as editor. Other Muslim publications appear sporadically
as the need for them is indicated.

In addition to these publications and such attention as they
receive in the non-Muslim Negro press, the Muslims lose no op-
portunity to offer themselves to public attention through television
and radio. The chief spokesman for interpreting the Movement
through these media is the ubiquitous Malcolm X, whose adroit-
ness and cunning, displayed during many of his numerous radio
interviews, led a Boston critic to name him "the Harlem Asp.'*
Also known as "the Big X," Malcolm has tilted with such TV
notables as Mike Wallace and has been interviewed on radio or
television by such top-flight journalists as Nat Hentoff, Louis
Lomax and Chuck Stone. As a guest on the two-and-a-half-hour-
long Jerry Williams show on radio station WMEX in Boston,
Malcolm turned what was intended to be a half-hour interview
into a two-and-a-half-hour marathon.

The Muslims also have a regular and extensive series of
weekly radio lectures. In December 1960, a listing of "Muham-
mad's Nationwide Radio Schedule" in Mr. Muhammad Speaks
covered seven stations, each reaching cities within a hundred-mile-
or-more radius of a major metropolitan area. (The stations were
KAPZ, St. Louis; WEAW-FM, Chicago-Milwaukee-Indianapolis;
WERD, Atlanta; WHAT, Philadelphia; WJLB, Detroit-Toledo;
WNTA and WNTA-FM, New York City; and WSID, Baltimore-
Washington, D. C.) The list keeps growing, but the Muslim lead-
ership is looking far beyond this limited expedient. The next
major enterprise the Movement hopes to undertake in its constant
reaching for the masses is its own radio station — "The Voice of
Islam," broadcasting from "the wilderness of North America."

6 Tensions:

Outside the Movement

The Black Muslims are psychologically indrawn: they feel
responsible only to each other and derive most of their satisfaction
from their own mutual approval. Yet they are also aware of the
world around them — and smugly aware that the world is aware
of them.

To a great extent, the Muslims define their Movement by
negative contrast to their most important audiences: Negroes,
Jews, the orthodox Moslems in America and the hated whites.
They assert their own strength and purity by castigating the weak-
ness and depravity they claim to see among these strangers. The
Movement, they imply, is in no way ignorant, corrupted or im-
potent. It is not at all like the world from which they have drawn
themselves apart.

But more is involved in the traffic between the Movement
and its surrounding world than a mere exercise in self-glorification.
The Muslim statements are often complex, foreshadowing ultimate
goals and hopes even while they make explicit the dogma of the
moment. And in the response of the Negro, Jewish, Moslem and
white communities to the Black Muslim challenge, it is possible
to read some hints, at least, of the onrushing future.

I. THE NEGRO COMMUNITY

Individual Negro Leadership

The sudden prominence of the Black Muslim Movement
and its rapidly increasing appeal to the Negro masses have become
a source of major concern for the recognized Negro leadership.
Some of this concern may be attributed to professional jealousy,
for each Muslim was once potentially a member of a different

135

136 Tensions: Outside the Movement

Negro organization. But beneath this surface jealousy lie far more
serious apprehensions — a recognition of the Muslims as a danger-
ous threat to the areas of harmony that have been won through
years of painstaking interracial negotiation and experimentation.

Negro leadership in America — politicians, intellectuals and
businessmen — has been uniformly dedicated to the principle of
cooperation with the white man in any attempt to relieve the
Negro's condition. Muhammad's harangues on "the truth about
the white man" are therefore considered dangerous and destruc-
tive, regardless of their truth or falsity. One leader who has spent
a lifetime in patient negotiation with the white community de-
clared that Muhammad's allegations are "intemperate enough to
be insulting and true enough to be embarrassing."

The strategy of Negro leadership has characteristically been
to avoid embarrassing the white man, even at the cost of some
delay in attaining a desired end. This has not been accidental:
the American Negro has clung tenaciously to his belief in the
American Creed and the Christian ideal, and he has wanted to
believe in the white man's essential integrity. Indeed, he has been
much more willing to see the mote in his own eye than to argue
about the beam in the eye of the white man. John Steinbeck
sensed this when he wrote:

I am constantly amazed at the qualities we expect in Negroes. No
race has ever offered another such high regard. We expect Negroes
to be wiser than we are, more tolerant than we are, braver, more
dignified than we, more self-controlled and self -disciplined. . . . We
expect them to obey rules of conduct we flout, to be more courteous,
more gallant, more proud, more steadfast. In a word, while main-
taining that Negroes are inferior to us, by our unquestioning faith
in them we prove our conviction that they are superior in many fields,
even fields we are presumed to be trained and conditioned in and
they are not.1

Negro leadership has never seriously considered whether the
Negro might solve his problems without help. It holds that the
Negro is an integral part of the American society, that his problem
is America's problem — the problem of all the people, created by
all the people — and that it is to the interest of all the people to
participate in its solution. Besides, in the complex set of relation-
ships that constitutes a modern society, it is unrealistic to think

Tensions: Outside the Movement 137

of any one group solving an intergroup problem alone — except by
annihilating the offending group or by a complete physical sepa-
ration from them. Few Negro leaders have envisaged either
extreme.

The Black Muslims do not repudiate either possibility. On
the contrary, they already are demanding physical separation; and
while they are cautious in discussing the means by which the white
man may be annihilated, they proclaim openly that his time is up.
Listen to Minister Malcolm X as he addresses a white audience at
Boston University:

A child stays within the mother until the time of birth. When the
time of birth arrives, the child must be separated or it will destroy
the mother and itself. The mother can't carry the child after its
time — the child wants to be free. It cries for a world of its own.
If the mother will not give it up naturally, the doctors must forcibly
take it from her, which sometimes causes her death. If she can set
it free naturally, easily, so much the better; if not, it must be taken.
Twenty million so-called Negroes in America number a nation within
a nation, crying for freedom. We must be free. We must be born.
We must be separated or cause the destruction of both.2

This precept — that separation is the only final solution to
the race problem in this country and throughout the world — is
appalling to most Negroes. A white newspaper has caught the
responsible mood of the Negro community with unusual clarity:

In the long struggle over racial discrimination in the United States,
the American Negro has almost always behaved with fortitude and
restraint.

He has pressed the battle for his rights through orderly and legal
means. He has borne insult and injury without resorting to violence.
He has faced the hate-mongers without adopting hatred as his
creed.

His passive resistance campaign against discrimination on busses in
Montgomery, Alabama, showed a moral strength and self-discipline
that has few parallels in our history.3

When Negro leadership attempted to ignore Muhammad and
his Muslims, Malcolm X complained:

Mr. Muhammad has done more to make the Black Man in America
think than all the Negro teachers and leaders together. ... If he

138 Tensions: Outside the Movement

were not responsible for doing this, he would not be the object of
so much comment and so much concern. For a long time, they tried
to cover him up — to put him under the rug. They figured he would
just evaporate or go away. No matter what he did, nothing was said
about it in the white press or any other press. It looked like it was
in agreed method to just not say anything about him.4

But the Movement could not be realistically ignored. Muhammad
was drawing thousands of Negroes wherever he spoke, and it was
inevitable that Negro leadership would have to take official recog-
nition of him.

The politicians were among the first to yield. In Harlem,
at a two-day "Unity Feast" held in July 1958, Muhammad was
greeted by Manhattan Borough President Hulan Jack, who re-
ferred to him as "our distinguished visitor from Chicago" and
welcomed him on behalf of Manhattan's 2 million residents. City
Councilman Earl Brown told the 8,000 Muslims and other nation-
alists present: "I have been inspired by being with you. ... As I
gaze upon you I recognize fully our power as a people." Judge
Carson DeWitt Baker and State Senator James Watson were also
present. U. S. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell wired his
regrets at being unable to attend and offered his sentiments for
the success of the meeting. The celebration was also attended by
J. A. Rogers, historian and columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier;
Col. Walters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association;
Noel Austin, Director of the Manhattan Elks Civil Liberties
League; and other notables of political, labor and fraternal organi-
zations.5

Muslim relations with Negro politicians are more consistently
cordial than their relations with any other group of Negro leaders,
even though Muslims have yet to demonstrate their voting
strength. In August 1960, for example, Martin Luther King,
Jackie Robinson, Adam Clayton Powell, Thurgood Marshall,
Hulan Jack, Roy Wilkins and other Negro leaders were invited to
attend a Harlem rally and "debate key issues" before the public.
Seven thousand Negroes came to hear them, but only Hulan Jack
put in an appearance. Mr. Jack expressed great appreciation and
admiration for Elijah Muhammad as "a spiritual leader whose
purpose is to bring about better understanding and cooperation."
Malcolm X, who hosted the meeting, called upon all Negro leaders

Tensions: Outside the Movement 139

to set aside "petty differences" and to "reason together and keep
open minds." Some leaders had failed to appear, he explained,
because they were afraid "of irking their white bosses [or] em-
barrassing their white liberal friends."

An earlier Leadership Conference, held in Harlem in January
1960, was attended by an impressive array of New York poli-
ticians— this time including Adam Powell. Malcolm X com-
mended these leaders for "at last catching up with the progressive
thinking of the enlightened Negro masses." He also warned them
that, while the Muslims have thus far refrained from active politi-
cal participation, they should not be discounted when political
decisions are made that affect the Negro community.

Of the American Negroes connected with politics at any
level, only United Nations Under Secretary Ralph Bunche has
come under direct fire from the Black Muslims. They have ex-
coriated him as "the George Washington of Israel," presumably
because they suspect him of favoring Israel in his negotiation of
the Israeli-Arab dispute. This negotiation was, however, hailed
as a diplomatic achievement; it brought Dr. Bunche a Nobel Prize
in spite of the denunciation of the Black Nation of Islam."

Negro intellectuals have systematically ignored Muhammad.
Like most Negroes outside the lower class, they have not felt
impelled to attend his meetings; their knowledge of the Muslims
has come, for the most part, through occasional conversations with
persons who have read about the Movement. In a nationwide
sampling of intellectual opinion, a surprising percentage of "in-
formed" Negro intellectuals was found to know practically nothing
about the Movement,7 even though it has been constantly reported
in the Negro press for several years, featured in almost all of the
national news magazines and covered repeatedly in the white press
for at least two years! Even in the cities where Muslim activities
regularly outdraw Christian and fraternal affairs and receive na-
tional coverage, the intellectuals seem unaware of the Muslims'
existence.

Some of this "ignorance" is, of course, a kind of psychologi-
cal insulation. It is a refusal to acknowledge the existence of any
phenomenon that might be interpreted — by the white community,
at least — as casting doubt on the Negro's social and intellectual

140 Tensions: Outside the Movement

maturity. At first the intellectuals considered it a badge of status
to "know nothing of these people." They "rarely read the Negro
press," and none of their friends were aware of any Muslim
activity. After a spate of articles on the Black Muslim in Time,
The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Reader's
Digest and other middle-class media, the intellectuals at last ad-
mitted having "heard something about the Movement" but tended
to dismiss it as "just another Harlem-type cult of ignorant Ne-
groes." An article by Nat Hentoff in The Reporter magazine, in
August 1960, brought polite inquiries from the Negro elite. (It
is interesting that some Negro intellectuals first heard of the
Muslims through white contacts.) The "Muslim question" is
gradually — and belatedly — becoming a frequent topic of conver-
sation among the intelligentsia.

The Muslims are ambivalent toward the intellectuals, who
they say, "have been in the white man's schools longer and have
been more thoroughly brainwashed." Those few who join the
sect are acclaimed as the true race leaders, who have sacrificed
status to service, and great pride is taken in their "professional"
or "college" training. But intellectuals are more acceptable than
other Negroes to the white community in situations approaching
equality, and nearly all of them spurn Muslim-type protest organi-
zations. Such intellectuals are scored for permitting the white man
to "make fools and Uncle Toms out of our educated and pro-
fessional class of people with a false show of social equality."8
The Muslims also charge the intellectuals with "giving their edu-
cation back to the teachers" rather than teaching in the Negro
schools and colleges, where they are more sorely needed.

The Muslims do not expect to make many converts among
the Negro intellectuals, for these are held to be the "satisfied
Black Men" who are least concerned with the problems confront-
ing the majority of Negroes. To the intellectuals, on the other
hand, the Black Muslim Movement looms as a threat — not to
themselves, but to their hopes and aspirations for the Negro in
America.

Negro big-businessmen, like Negro politicians, are very much
aware of the Muslims — and especially of their economic potential.
They do not like Muhammad's religious and racial extremism.

Tensions: Outside the Movement 141

but they welcome his continued stress upon economic self-suffi-
ciency and upon racial solidarity in protecting and strengthening
Negro financial interests. Those who do business with the Mus-
lims have found them reliable and businesslike. The Muslims do
not buy beyond their means, but they tend to buy merchandise of
good quality, usually for cash.

Negro businesses were well represented at the 1960 Muslim
Convention in Chicago. Banks, insurance companies, retail stores
and service enterprises accepted Muhammad's invitation to display
their wares and advertise their services at special "bazaars" in the
giant Chicago Coliseum, where the convention was held. How-
ever, one executive of a Negro insurance company, not represented
at the convention, has said privately:

In my opinion the "Muslim" movement or cult has not had, and will
not have in the future, any appreciable appeal to American Negroes
in either the Low- Middle- or Upper- social Class. ... It is my
further opinion that this movement is rendering a definite disservice
to the effort being made in the realm of human relations to make
democracy in its fullest sense a reality in this country, and should
be resisted to the utmost by the intelligent leadership of our group,
as well as the authorities vested with the responsibility of guaranteeing
the security of our country against such dangerous and radical move-
ments.

Whether he speaks for a significant number of Negro businessmen,
only the future will tell.

The Negro Press

The important elements of the Negro press have not sup-
ported Muhammad, nor have they in any way endorsed the Mus-
lim teachings. They have, however, given impetus to the Move-
ment by providing the medium through which it became known
to the Negro community as a whole. In this, the press has had
little choice: it exists to keep the public informed, and the Muslims
were and are news.

The Muslim leadership is fully aware of the importance of
the press to its interests. In the Messenger magazine, a Muslim
publication, Editor Malcolm X devoted two full pages to an article
expressing his support of the Negro press:

142 Tensions: Outside the Movement

The daily [white] press can make even the "Negro" public eat your
flesh with its powerful . . . propaganda. . . . The Negro press may
have its shortcomings, but when the die is cast and your "downtown"
friends ready you for the dogs, there must be a NEGRO PRESS to
present your case to the "Negro" public. The Negro press is our
only medium for voicing the true plight of our oppressed people to
the world.9

He gave specific endorsement to four Negro newspapers: the
Pittsburgh Courier, the Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, the New
Jersey Herald News and the New York Amsterdam News. Read-
ers were encouraged to examine each of the Negro papers and
"then support the one you find to be the most fearless, uncom-
promising, and outspoken in behalf of our downtrodden people."

The Pittsburgh Courier, with a circulation of 300,000, is the
largest Negro newspaper in the country. It has a nationwide
coverage, implemented through several regional editions (such as
the New York Courier), and it was the first paper to give any
significant coverage to the Black Muslim Movement. For about
three years, from 1956 until the summer of 1959, it served in some
ways as a spokesman for the Movement. It carried Muhammad's
column, as well as news about Muslim activities, and in 1957
it presented Muhammad with the "Courier Achievement Award."

The Courier's editors and columnists also came frequently
to the Muslims' defense. For example, George S. Schuyler, New
York editor of the Courier and one of the most widely read Negro
journalists in the world, wrote in his column, "Views and Re-
views" :

The recent uproar over Mr. Muhammad's movement . . . seems to
me to be quite superficial. . . . There is no point in inveighing against
Mr. Muhammad's followers as anti-white when the whole climate
surrounding them is anti-black. . . . Mr. Muhammad may be a
rogue and a charlatan, but when anybody can get tens of thousands
of Negroes to practice economic solidarity, respect their women,
alter their atrocious diet, give up liquor, stop crime, juvenile delin-
quency and adultery, he is doing more for the Negro's welfare than
any current Negro leader I know.10

In October 1959, the Courier took Time magazine to task for
"flippancy" in its treatment of the facts in an expose of Muham-
mad. The Courier said editorially:

Tensions: Outside the Movement 143

Time magazine ... is relentless in its frenetic search for le bon mot.
It seems frequently more interested in the good word than in the
good reputation. If it can get its writers to turn a good, or bad,
phrase, so long as it "clicks," Time's editors do not seem to be con-
cerned. They have the same penchant for "facts" unadorned or
unexplained.11

The Courier was complaining about Time's unamplified reference
to Elijah Muhammad's arrest on a charge of contributing to the
delinquency of a minor in 1934 and to Time's assertion that the
Muslim leader was jailed for draft-dodging in 1941. The Courier
editorial pointed out that the charge of "contributing to the delin-
quency of a minor" was brought against Muhammad for refusing
to withdraw his children from the sect's parochial school and send
them to public schools. With reference to Muhammad's alleged
draft-dodging, the Courier pointed out that Muhammad was
forty-five years old in 1941 and, therefore, ineligible for the draft.
It did not offer the further clarification that Muhammad was jailed
for exhorting his followers not to register for the draft.

In 1959, when ownership of the Courier passed to more con-
servative hands, Muhammad's column was discontinued, and
coverage of Muslim affairs was sharply curtailed. The Messenger's
column soon began to appear in another Negro paper, the Los
Angeles Herald-Dispatch, which quickly became the de facto
official organ of the Black Muslim Movement.

The New York Amsterdam News is the only other news-
paper of significant circulation giving important coverage to the
Muslims. The News displays little if any overt bias, toward the
Movement or against it. It gives considerable attention to Muslim
affairs, particularly in New York City, where there is a large
Muslim contingent; but its policy is clearly one of impartial re-
porting. The News treats the Muslims as an important and poten-
tially powerful group in the Harlem community, but not as unusual
or bizarre. (Harlem abounds in exotic cults, sects and national-
istic organizations, and the News displays a certain sophistication
regarding all such movements.)

Characteristically, the News invited an African Moslem, Isa
S. Wali, to write a series of articles interpreting orthodox Islam
for its readers. Against this background, it invited its readers to

144 Tensions: Outside the Movement

judge for themselves whether the Black Muslims are a bona fide
Islamic sect. The paper observed:

Due to the rapid growth of the followers of Elijah Muhammad in
Harlem, one of the most frequently asked questions in Harlem today
is "What is Islam?"

Mr. Muhammad's followers call themselves Moslems and their reli-
gion Islam. There are those who dispute their claims and charge
that they are not true Moslems and that their religion is not true
Islam.

Without attempting to take any sides in the controversy, the Amster-
dam News herewith publishes this interpretation of Islam as it was
interpreted by a Moslem of Africa at the second annual conference
of the American Society of African Culture.

The hope is that our readers, having been told just what Islam is, will
be able themselves to determine who is not practicing it.12

One of the few papers which has ever been harshly critical
of the Muslims is The New Crusader, a tabloid published in Chi-
cago. In the autumn of 1959, when Balm L. Leavell, Jr., was
editor, the Crusader published a series of articles "exposing"
Muhammad. The paper has a limited circulation, however, even
in Chicago, where it must compete with the long-established Chi-
cago Daily Defender. Outside Chicago, the Crusader is virtually
unknown.

The Crusader devoted several issues to its expose13 and
claimed that, on one occasion, the Muslims bought 10,000 copies
of the paper in bundles as they hit the newsstands and burned
them in the streets "to curtail circulation of any unfavorable stories
about their leader." The keystone of the expose was an article
quoting Talib Ahmad Dawud, a rival Moslem leader, who denied
that Muhammad was a bona fide Moslem or that he would be
permitted to make the pilgrimage to Mecca — a prediction that
turned out to be mistaken.

It is worth noting that even this paper did not criticize
Muhammad's racial attitudes, preferring to question his religion
instead. Indeed, the Crusader's racial views appear to parallel
closely those of Muhammad and the Herald-Dispatch. In an edi-
torial which appeared in the same issue with an installment of the
"expos6," the Crusader said:

Tensions: Outside the Movement 145

. . . Negroes have labored so long under the illusion that there is a
WHITE SUPREMACY, that . . . IT'S TIME we got some IDEA
ABOUT BLACK ALSO BEING SUPREME! . . . History bears out
the contention that the NEGRO IS OF SUPERIOR BACKGROUND.
. . . No, we don't go along with Rev. King on hollering down BLACK
SUPREMACY ... our leaders, INCLUDING DR. KING, persist
in teaching that old time religion in which THE WHITE MAN IS
ALWAYS SUPREME. . . . Most Negroes today are hungry for
AGGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP. . . . They WANT ACTION NOW,
VIOLENT ACTION if the situation calls for it. That's why ELIJAH
MUHAMMAD is TROUBLING THE WHITE FOLKS TODAY.
... WE NEED BLACK SUPREMACY to get Negroes OFF THEIR
KNEES in churches that preach a WHITE HEAVEN, a WHITE
GOD, and a WHITE UNIVERSE.14

At one time it was obvious to anyone who read the Crusader
that it was anti-Muslim, even though its principal circulation is
among the classes from which the Muslim membership is drawn.
The coincidence was striking. But times change, and the Crusader
is no longer anti-Muslim. By a not quite so striking coincidence,
the Crusader's new editor is also the editor of one of Muham-
mad's newest pocket magazines, Mr. Muhammad Speaks to the
Blackman.

Institutional Negro Leadership

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People is the organization upon which most American Negroes
have, in recent years, pinned their hopes for a solution to the
problem of racial subordination. In earlier generations they had
relied respectively upon the church, the major political parties
and the moral consciousness of the "better class" white people.
Failed each time they trusted, they now rely only upon themselves
and their individual well-wishers, expressing their moral and civic
convictions through the NAACP.

The NAACP, in turn, has displayed an unparalleled confi-
dence in the adequacy of the law, the competence of its own
lawyers, the sense of moral responsibility in our judiciary and the
integrity of those sworn to enforce the courts' decisions. The
NAACP's legal arm has won some encouraging legal decisions,
which — when the white community has not openly flouted them —

146 Tensions: Outside the Movement

have helped to make the Negro's lot as an American citizen
increasingly tolerable.

But to many Negro Americans, the way of the NAACP is
too slow, too expensive and too uncertain. The fact that the
NAACP has accomplished more concrete results than has religion,
politics or the appeal to moral responsibility seems inconsequential
in today's jet age. Negroes cannot understand why they must
spend time and money again and again to have the courts secure
for them privileges that all other Americans — and many resident
aliens — take for granted. This is especially true of those furthest
down the social scale, those who lack the sophistication necessary
to rationalize their status but no longer accept it as necessary or
inevitable.

The Black Muslims are just such a group. They do not trust
the NAACP, partly because they do not understand either the
organization or the complex of politico-social relations that make
it necessary. Yet even those Muslims who claim to understand
the NAACP vigorously reject it. They reject it because white
people, and Negroes who want the white man's acceptance, are
identified with it. The Muslims claim that, in some way, any
group the white man is identified with inhibits or qualifies the
Negro's sense of freedom and equality.

At first, the leadership of the Black Muslims was not antago-
nistic toward the NAACP. It had courted the notion that, as soon
as Negroes understood the Movement, they would all embrace it
— leaders and laymen alike. The total orientation of the Black
Muslim is away from the white man; and this is not merely a
creedal expression but an attitude that informs his whole way of
life. It is inconceivable to the Muslim that, after "learning the
truth," any sensible Negro would prefer to retain his white asso-
ciations. The Muslim leadership fully expected — and still does
expect, though more patiently — that Negro leadership would join
freely in the "United Front of Black Men." Moreover, the Move-
ment abhors all intraracial strife and will sedulously avoid it,
except when it feels compelled to maintain face.

In an interview in April 1959, Muhammad praised the
NAACP as doing a good job "within its limitations." The "limita-
tions" were, of course, its interracial board and its dependence

Tensions: Outside the Movement 147

upon white philanthropy. Muhammad's preference is not to de-
stroy interracial contacts willy-nilly wherever they exist, even those
of a practical nature. What he wants is a "Black Council" above
such contacts, a council that will coordinate a grand strategy look-
ing forward to eventual independence from all contact with the
white man. Presumably, as the leader of a disciplined body of
young Muslims in every major Negro community in the country,
Mr. Muhammad would head such a council. This idea is, need-
less to say, rather less than acceptable to the NAACP.

At first, the NAACP, like most other Negro organizations,
paid no official attention to the Muslims. The NAACP itself was
under fire from conservatives for "pushing too fast," and it may
well have been relieved by the sudden arrival of a group which is
bent on pushing very much faster. During a television interview
in July 1959, Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the NAACP,
was asked what he thought of the Muslims. He replied only that
"for years the NAACP has been opposed to white extremists
preaching hatred of Negro people, and we are equally opposed to
Negro extremists preaching against white people simply for the
sake of whiteness." The following month, however, after some
excitement in the white press about "the Muslim menace," Negroes
and whites alike demanded an official statement from the NAACP.
Most hoped that the statement would be a strong indictment, and
Mr. Wilkins complied:

The NAACP opposes and regards as dangerous any group, white or
black, political or religious, that preaches hatred among men. Hatred
destroys men — the haters and the hated.

The so-called Moslems who teach black supremacy and hatred of
all white people have gained a following only because America has
been so slow in granting equal opportunities and has permitted the
abuse and persecution of Negro citizens. At this very moment the
Congress is shadowboxing with a milk-and-water civil rights bill. All
this furnishes ammunition for the use of opportunistic leaders.

The clearest rejection of the "hate-white" doctrine of these so-called
Moslems is to be found in the new states of Africa where leaders
recognize the need for cooperation with white nations and with their
economies.

Prime Minister Nkrumah of Ghana cannot build the Volta Dam with
hot-air hatred from American Negro cultists.15

148 Tensions: Outside the Movement

The most comprehensive statement on the Muslims issued
by an NAACP official was made by Derrick Bell, Executive Secre-
tary of the Pittsburgh Branch, in a radio address over station
KDKA. Mr. Bell addressed himself principally to certain "sincere
individuals" who had advised that the NAACP "must denounce
the Muslims in no uncertain terms" and suggested "full page ads
in the local newspapers" for the purpose. Many concerned per-
sons had offered money to finance such an advertisement. Others
called for a condemnation of the Pittsburgh Courier for publishing
Muhammad's column. In answer, Mr. Bell said in part:

I question the wisdom of either of these proposals . . . not because
either the NAACP or I agree with the ... Muslims. On the contrary
we could not disagree more. We are convinced that . . . racial su-
periority is just as wrong when preached by black men as by white
men. Those who have . . . watched the NAACP's struggle for free-
dom . . . will not likely confuse the NAACP with the Muslims merely
because there are Negroes in both groups. . . . [Further] to urge
the Courier to discontinue a column which thousands of its readers
find of interest [is not the remedy]. The Muslims would simply find
another medium to disseminate the same material.16

Thurgood Marshall, chief legal counsel for the NAACP,
was less diplomatic and considerably more direct. In an address
at Princeton University, Marshall denounced the Muslims as "run
by a bunch of thugs organized from prisons and jails, and financed,
I am sure, by Nasser or some Arab group." He called the Mus-
lims "vicious" and a real threat to the FBI, the NAACP and all
state law-enforcement agencies.17

The Muslims then fought back. Malcolm X referred to
Marshall as a "twentieth century Uncle Tom" and declared that
Muhammad was "too busy to worry about the envious yapping
of every jealous dog that is paid to bark at him." The Los Angeles
Herald-Dispatch devoted its editorial columns to a discussion of
"The Ugly American" — that is, "the American Negro who has
made a career of being a good Uncle Tom." Yet the Dispatch
offered Marshall an excuse by blaming "Zionism" for the state-
ment he had made at Princeton:

Marshall is a competent attorney who has consciously or uncon-
sciously accepted Zionism as his philosophy. While speaking at
Princeton University to a group of white Americans, he denounced the

Tensions: Outside the Movement 149

followers of the Islamic faith as "a bunch of thugs financed by Nasser
or some Arab group." This is Zionist ideology at its ugliest. . . . The
Zionists are the most subtle, successful, and insidious [hate group] . . .
and have injected their poison into the ugly American, the Uncle
Tom.18

The Jews, said the Dispatch, have infiltrated the NAACP, whose
primary function is to promote the interests of the Jews in the
guise of helping the Negro.

In the early thirty's, a large percentage of European Jews were en-
gaged in trade, living in the rear of stores, markets and generally
making their living from the Negro in the Negro community. Thus
they had an excellent opportunity to study the habits and weaknesses
of the Negro. The depression of the 30's, through the activities of
the Communist Party, allowed the Jews to further intrench them-
selves into the community, to infect his thinking to the extent that
by 1940 the Negro was almost entirely dependent upon the Jews and
had accepted the thinking and ideology of the Jewish people. In the
late 30's and by the early 50's the Jews had finally gained control of
the NAACP.19

The NAACP has permitted itself to be sidetracked by the Jews
into a struggle for integration. But integration is a stratagem of
the Jews "to divert the Negro from basic economic problems by
keeping him chasing butterflies," while the Jew works feverishly
to establish himself economically at the Negro's expense. Each
time the Black Man tries to establish his own leadership, he is
blocked by the Jews, who fear an ultimate economic loss if the
Negro takes over his own destiny.

Our main task then in 1960 is to rid ourselves of this phony Jewish
leadership, to work and cooperate with all groups but as equals and
not to permit ourselves to be dominated by any of them.20

As if to prove their willingness to forget past differences with
the NAACP, the Muslims opened 1960 with a significant gesture.
Wallace D. Muhammad, 26-year-old son of Elijah and minister of
the Philadelphia Temple, helped to launch an NAACP fund drive
on behalf of Mrs. Daisy Bates, NAACP regional executive, and
her husband, who had lost their newspaper and their personal
fortune because of their activities in the integration crisis. Young
Muhammad contributed fifty dollars with the assurance that:

150 Tensions: Outside the Movement

We Muslims have always admired Mrs. Daisy Bates for her strong
courage in the face of great odds in the Little Rock, Arkansas situ-
ation. And since our organization, under the leadership of Mr. Elijah
Muhammad is striving for the same goal as the NAACP in their
fight for our people's rights in this country, we feel that Mrs. Bates
is more than deserving of this small contribution. . . .21

This overture was a significant reversal of the behavior
charged to Muslims in New York less than two months earler.
At a reception given in Harlem for President and Mrs. Seku
Toure of the Republic of Guinea, L. Joseph Overton, president
of the New York branch NAACP, was so roundly booed that he
was unable to perform his scheduled function as master of cere-
monies. Overton is popular with Harlem's black nationalists; his
NAACP is not. The Muslims had not sponsored the reception,
but they were present in force, and they were accused by their
critics of starting the demonstration against the NAACP, which
then became "spontaneous."

Malcolm X categorically denied this accusation. He warned
that the Negro masses are unsympathetic to any Negro leader
"handpicked by the white man," but he denounced this act of
discourtesy as "a terrible thing." James Lawson, president of the
United African Nationalist Movement, who had directed the
reception, supported Malcolm's position. He insisted that the
booing had not been organized. Rather, he said, it was "sponta-
neous and unanimous," for "the name 'NAACP' is tantamount to
waving a red flag in front of a bull." The common people, Lawson
said, remember the NAACP as "the enemy of Marcus Garvey and
Booker T. Washington, and they did not want the mention of that
group on any program honoring the African Chief of State."

Whatever the Muslims' share of responsibility for the demon-
stration, Mr. Overton — whom the Harlem Muslims call "one of
the few NAACP leaders who knows anything at all about what
the common people are thinking" — seems to have remained un-
perturbed. The New York Times later reported:

Despite his unpleasant experience at the reception for President
Tour£, Mr. Overton was moved in a recent interview to praise the
Temple of Islam [i.e., the Black Muslims]. Since his work for the
NAACP is in Harlem, this may be an indication of the movement's
strength.

Tensions: Outside the Movement 151

"I daresay there is no group with higher moral standards," Mr. Over-
ton commented. "Many vices have been dominated; mutual love has
been cultivated."

Mr. Overton expressed confidence that his type of "grassroots lead-
ership" would lead to a measure of understanding with Malcolm X
and his followers.22

In return, Malcolm X has said that "Overton is out there in the
street with the rest of us. He's got some idea of what the Black
Man wants — what he's thinking. It's not so with the others. Every
time I've seen Roy Wilkins he's been at the Waldorf, or in the
vicinity of the Waldorf. I have never seen him with black people
unless they were looking for white people!"

In short, those NAACP leaders who live closest to the expe-
riences of the Muslim class seem to have a more sympathetic
understanding of the Movement. They do not condone the Mus-
lims' extremist policies, nor do they share the Muslims' extreme
antipathy for and distrust of the white man. But they can appre-
ciate the individual Muslim's sense of futility — his awareness that
he is hemmed in by immense forces which are brutally indifferent
to his sense of dignity and personal worth.

The Muslims look upon the National Urban League, like
the NAACP, as "controlled by white men, for its existence is
dependent upon white philanthropy." Like the NAACP, it is no
more than a way station: "It is not the answer."

Because of the nature of its program, the Urban League
has not been brought into direct conflict with the Movement.
Some league officials, however, have expressed concern about the
negative publicity they feel the Muslims have brought upon the
whole Negro community. Executive Secretary Lester B. Granger
concedes that the Muslims have momentarily caught the public
attention, but he insists that they are only a temporary symptom
of the present crisis in race relations. "These racist, hate move-
ments," he believes, appear at intervals of crisis, spend themselves
and fade into oblivion, while the truly significant improvements in
the Negro's status are being made through patient cooperation of
Negroes and whites, working together in the common interest.

The Urban League has issued no official statement regarding

152 Tensions: Outside the Movement

the Muslims. Asked about this apparent lack of official concern,
Mr. Granger explained:

It is true that there has been expressed a great deal of interest in
this variant among Negro protest expressions. However, my own
feeling is that the discussion has been out of all proportion to the
significance of the movement whether one gauges that significance in
the relationship to the number it involves or the historical record of
similar movements that have regularly occurred over a period of more
than 40 years.

In short, I do not believe that any good purpose is served by having
an organization such as mine make an official expression of opinion
in view of the many truly significant developments with which we are
concerned.23

Not all of the Urban League's executives in the local offices
across the country share Mr. Granger's detached aloofness. In
Ohio, for example, Andrew G. Freeman, executive director of the
Columbus Urban League, felt constrained to sound a public note
of warning:

The basic faiths with which we are familiar meet the needs of all
men. Our philosophy of government is based on the belief in the
brotherhood of man under God. Any teaching contrary to this prin-
ciple is extremely dangerous and should be viewed with concern.24

Edwin C. Berry, director of the Chicago Urban League, was more
emphatic, perhaps because his work brings him into more personal
contact with the average Negro. In an informal statement that
has been widely quoted in the national press, Berry said: "A guy
like this Muslim leader makes more sense than I do to the man on
the street who's getting his teeth kicked out. I have a sinking
feeling that Elijah Muhammad is very significant."25

The Black Muslims are emphatically opposed to passive re-
sistance as it has been expressed by the followers of Martin
Luther King, Jr., and in the wave of "sit-ins" conducted by college
students across the country. They oppose King because he empha-
sizes the Christian principle of loving the oppressor rather than
retaliating against him. This is precisely the "slave philosophy"
the Muslims have sought to escape in their repudiation of Christi-
anity. Hence, King represents to the Muslims a capitulation to
the cunning Christian strategy of the white man. "How long do

Tensions: Outside the Movement 153

you think we'd last," asked a Muslim leader, "if the white man
thought we'd all bow our heads and present our necks to the axe?
About long enough for him to get the axe!"

The Muslims score King for having "turned many potential
freedom-fighting Negroes into contented, docile slaves,"26 and his
"fitness to lead American Negroes" is questioned. His decision to
leave Montgomery to become associate minister at his father's
church in Atlanta brought a bitter denunciation from the Los
Angeles Herald-Dispatch:

In February, this same Reverend Martin Luther King, the Darling
of the South, Honey Boy of the North, is now moving his headquarters
from the increasingly hostile atmosphere of Alabama to the more
lucrative haven of Atlanta. Is this a retreat from the bloody racial
struggle soon to erupt in Alabama? Has his philosophy developed
from "turn the other cheek" to "turn and run away"?

If all of us are going to die and go to heaven as the Negro Christian
ministers have been preaching, why must Reverend King flee the
"portals of death" in Alabama, conveniently seeking safer refuge
among the wealthier Negroes of Atlanta? . . .

Reverend Martin Luther King could clear his conscience simply by
taking a firm stand on the side of TRUTH. Tell the Negroes in
America the TRUTH — that they will never get anything up in the
sky after they die, nor will they ever get anything here on earth
either until they are ready and willing to shed blood or die fighting
for it.27

Dr. King did not reply to this attack; but in an earlier address
before the National Bar Association, meeting in Milwaukee, he
had cited the Muslims as "one of the hate groups arising in our
midst which would preach a doctrine of black supremacy," a new
kind of bigotry as bad as the old one of white supremacy.

The Muslims ridicule the charge that teaching the Negro
to defend his person and his dignity has anything to do with black
supremacy. The Black Man is by nature peaceful and respectful,
but it is also the nature of a man to fight to protect himself. The
so-called Negro, however, has been so psychologically paralyzed
by the black preachers and their religion that he is no longer a
man.

No one can react to persecution like this but the Negro, and he does
it under the counseling of the Negro preacher. . . . Were it not for

154 Tensions: Outside the Movement

the Negro pastor, our people would be just like the Hungarians, we'd
be fighters. . . . The Negro is a fighting man all right. He fought in
Korea; he fought in Germany; he fought in the jungles of Iwo Jima.
But that same Negro will come back here, and the white man will
hang his mother on a tree, and he will take the Bible and say, "For-
give them Lord, for they know not what they do." This Negro
preacher makes them that way. . . . Where there is a slave like that,
why you have a slave-making religion.28

Nothing short of "an eye for an eye" will have a lasting impression
upon the white man, for he "has never stolen an acre of land or
chained a single black to be his slave without force." Hence
Malcolm urges the Black Man to "be peaceful and loving. Agree
with everyone, but if anyone comes to take advantage of you, do
the same thing the white man does; lay down your life! and the
Black Man will be respected all over the planet Earth."29

Passivity, say the Muslims, robs the Negro of his only
weapon. This is especially true in America, where the white men
are morally indifferent and the Negroes are a numerical minority.
One Muslim brother explained: "When the Ghanaians got ready
for the British to go, they told the British to 'get out!' and the
British got out. The same was true of the Belgians — and when
they were a little slow, why the Congolese helped them to go.
But the Ghanaians and the Congolese were at home and in the
majority. When the South Africans get ready for the white man
to go, why they can just all sit down, and the white man has to go
or starve. It's not so here. When the white man here gets tired of
your 'sitting down' or 'sitting in,' you know what he's going to do."

Martin Luther King was challenged by Malcolm X to "come
to Harlem and prove that 'peaceful suffering' is the solution to the
atrocities suffered daily by Negroes throughout America."30 Dr.
King did not respond. The Muslims then announced that they
would hold a rally in Atlanta to demonstrate that Southern Ne-
groes were "tired of suffering, peacefully or otherwise."

The sit-ins are denounced, not for passivity, but for aggres-
sively "going into these stores where we are neither wanted nor
invited." Instead of pointlessly jeopardizing their lives, Negroes
are urged to "ignore the whites and develop [their] own business
as [the whites] have." Separatism, the Muslims point out, hits
the white man where it hurts. The whites have begun a nation-

Tensions: Outside the Movement 155

wide campaign against Muhammad as a "hate teacher" because
he excludes whites from his temples "on the same basis that
Negroes are excluded from white churches." This is proof that if
Negroes want the white man's respect, they need only turn the
white man's policy against him.

The sit-ins are described as being led by CORE (Committee
on Racial Equality), "an organization with headquarters in New
York on Park Row. ... Its policies have been . . . supported by
the usual phony Negro leadership, such as Jackie Robinson, Roy
Wilkins and Martin Luther King."31 These leaders are accused
of putting the lives of Negro children on the line "while they sip
cocktails in the lounges of Fifth Avenue." The Muslim leaders, in
contrast, do not "send our women and children into the lair of the
beast. We go ourselves, but not just to sit beside him or to eat in
his presence."

For the most part, Dr. King and other leaders associated
with the nonviolent approach to America's racial problem have
either ignored the Muslims or deplored their publicly-expressed
"invitation to annihilation" (as one Southern professor termed it).
Those who guide the passive resistance movements feel they have
nothing important to gain from answering the Muslims' charges
and that they stand almost no chance of enlisting the Muslims'
support. No constructive communication can take place between
the two groups until one or the other is ready to modify substan-
tially its point of view. This accommodation seems hardly likely
to occur.

The Negro Christian Churches

At first the Negro churches were inclined to accept the Black
Muslims as another Christian denomination, and in at least one
instance a Muslim minister is said to have belonged to a local
Pastor's Alliance. The report is not incredible, for the Muslim
ministers tend to be young and personable, and not much attention
is paid to the nature of a church in the average American com-
munity. Further, the range of religious beliefs and affiliations
among Negroes in the large cities tends to be quite wide; in the
pastors' organizations, the behavior and presentability of the min-

156 Tensions: Outside the Movement

ister is often the chief criterion of acceptability. What a man
preaches in his own church is not usually open to question, and
few of his colleagues would inquire into it. A Muslim minister,
therefore, would be accepted without question so long as no spe-
cific complaint was raised. And this leniency is not unusual; it is
true of nearly all community organizations. It is a matter of
record, for example, that a Troy (N.Y.) Muslim was a prominent
Mason and NAACP president, as well as a scoutmaster and a
member of the Advisory Council of the Juvenile Court.32

During the period of the Movement's recent growth, (that is,
from about 1955), Muslim ministers frequently addressed Chris-
tian congregations. Although such occurrences are considerably
less frequent now, they are by no means rare. One interesting
recent development in invitations to the Muslim minister is a shift
away from the lower-class pulpits, which once welcomed him, and
toward various organizations (such as men's groups) in the upper-
class churches, whose curiosity has been aroused.

Before the summer of 1959, Christian churches rarely denied
the Black Muslims the use of their churches for meetings and
special services. The traditional spirit of helpfulness was extended
to the Muslims quite as readily as to any other religious group.
After the Muslims were discovered by the national press, this
practice was sharply curtailed, and it became increasingly difficult
for the Muslims to obtain any accommodations in Christian
churches in most cities. The following incident, reported in the
Indianapolis Times, is a case in point:

A rally by an extremist Negro cult was cancelled yesterday when a
Methodist Church locked the group out of the church sanctuary.
About 50 followers of Elijah Muhammad, self-styled "messenger of
Allah," milled around outside the Gorham Methodist Church, llth
and Missouri, after the church's board of trustees decided at the last
minute to deny them use of the sanctuary.

The meeting was switched to Greater Zion Baptist Church, 701 N.
Tremont, but then was cancelled because of the large number of
police and newspaper reporters present. . . .

The Reverend G. N. Hardin, pastor of the Methodist Negro Church
[sic], said his group decided to bar the cultists, because "the Moslems
are not Christian as we see it. We do not know that what is printed

Tensions: Outside the Movement 157

[about the Moslems] is true, but it doesn't appear they are a Christian
group."33

The Muslims chide the Negro ministers for bowing to the
white man in denying the Muslims use of their sanctuaries. Why
should Negro Christians, who themselves are not permitted to
worship in the white churches, let the white man tell them whom
they may have as guests in their own sanctuaries? Yet even when
the Muslims were welcomed, they subjected their hosts to a con-
stant and embarrassing criticism. For example:

Speaking for more than 2,000 Moslems and non-Moslems last Tues-
day, Elijah Muhammad told his enthusiastic audience, "I will gladly
go to prison, sacrifice my very life itself, for the freedom and rights
of the 17,000,000 Negroes in America."

The spacious King Solomon's Baptist Church, 6124 14th Street
[Detroit], was packed to capacity with an overflow crowd of Negro
Christians and Moslems, many of whom had taken off from their jobs
to see and hear the noted spiritual leader. . . .

[Said Muhammad:] "Since the Negro Church has failed to do that
which we are doing, the Negro Church should be glad to join in
and work with us."

He called on the Negro pastors to accept Islam and unite with the
Moslems. "Let us use the Moslem Crescent, which is the sign of
LIFE . . . instead of the white man's cross, which is the sign of
slavery, suffering and death. Tell the white man that since he has
not given the Negro Christians justice in his Christian religion, you
are now going back to the Islamic religion of your foreparents . . .
a religion of TRUTH, in which we get freedom, justice and equal-
ity. ... A religion that gives us dignity, unity, and makes us
FEARLESS. . . ."34

On another occasion, in Los Angeles, three Negro ministers
were described as having "hot-footed it out of a meeting" at which
Malcolm X blamed the Negro clergy for "the Negro's deplorable
economic condition" and charged them with helping the white
man to keep the Negro Christian in poverty:

He said $90,000,000 is spent annually in Los Angeles in upkeeping
Negro preachers and churches, while [only] $60,000,000 is spent for
houses and furniture combined. . . . Malcolm X then pleaded with
the Negro preachers to return to their churches and put their mem-

158 Tensions: Outside the Movement

bers' money to work "for the members" . . . building factories and
supermarkets instead of [more] churches.35

Some churches have found themselves picketed, in effect, by
pairs of quiet young Muslims who pass out literature near their
doors on Sunday morning. Police in Springfield, Massachusetts,
patrolled the areas around three Negro churches after the pastors
complained of such activities,36 and there have been similar com-
plaints from other parts of the country.

The ministers themselves, like Christianity and the churches,
have been the target of direct and vicious attacks. Muslim leaders
urge the Negro laity to "pay no more attention to [these] black
friends of the white Slavemasters [for] they have not been able to
help you in all these years."37

The ignorant, greedy Negro preachers . . . are the willing tools of the
very ones who are responsible for our people's miserable plight. . . .
[The white man] has trained these ignorant, greedy Negro preachers
to parrot his religious lies to us, a pacifying religion that was skil-
fully designed to brainwash us and keep us in "our place."38

On the whole, the Christian ministers have responded with
restraint. They have typically deplored the Movement's extremism
and its flagrant attacks on Christianity. Yet, because of wide-
spread segregation and other signs of racial bias within the church
and throughout the Christian world, many ministers feel vulner-
able. They cannot in good conscience flatly reject the Black Mus-
lim position as a whole. Most have taken a position similar to that
of The Reverend William M. James, Minister of the Metropolitan
Community Methodist Church in Harlem, who repudiated black
racism as unjustifiable and unavailing but pointed out that it is
rooted in the persecution and the denial of common opportunities
to American Negroes. "Social disease breeds diseased leadership,"
he asserted and urged those interested in eliminating Muslim-type
movements to help the Negro break out of his "ghetto encircle-
ment."39

The Muslims have also exhibited some ambivalence — or at
least a willingness to work with Negroes who refuse to give up
their Christian faith. Even while denouncing the value of Chris-
tianity, Muhammad pleads for the cooperation of Christians and
Muslims in their areas of mutual concern.

Tensions: Outside the Movement 159

Let us lay aside, for the moment, our differences of faith and remem-
ber that we are members of the same [Black] Nation regardless of
religious beliefs. Let us think of the condition of the world and of
our future as a people. We can no more depend on the future of the
white race, for they have no future. The time is far spent, and their
sun is set.40

But this expediency is temporary. Muhammad's long-range goal
is to win all Negro Christians to Islam. Some Christians are
receptive, and the Movement keeps growing, but nearly all defec-
tions thus far have been individual. There have been almost no
mass defections as far as is known.

Perhaps the only known case of a wholesale transfer of
religious loyalties was that of a Baptist church in Richmond,
which, after two addresses by a Muslim minister, voted to become
a Muslim temple. Thereupon the minister dropped his "slave
name" and became David X. It may be significant that this
church was won to Muhammad during a period of extreme racial
unrest, when Virginians had closed their schools rather than admit
Negroes and had set up segregated schools for white children in
the Christian churches.

The Negro Man in the Street

In his current struggle for social dignity and a larger share
in the common values of the community, the American Negro is
generally ambivalent about means. Should he merely support his
leaders, or should he take direct action on his own initiative?
Increasingly he does both, for the man in the street, whether
white-collar or in overalls, is generally impatient with the progress
his leaders are making. Mrs. Rosa Parker, the gentle and un-
assuming seamstress who created the "Montgomery situation" by
asserting her right to sit where she chose on a public bus, is a
vivid illustration of this attitude. Mrs. Parker believed in and
supported the Negro leadership in Montgomery; but her soul
was as tired as her feet, and she could not wait any longer for
deliverance at their hands.

In Memphis, sometime before the public busses were de-
segregated, a Negro laborer boarded a bus in an outlying Negro
section during the evening rush hour. Two Negro women who had

160 Tensions: Outside the Movement

boarded earlier were seated midway in the bus. As the bus
approached the downtown area and more whites began to come
aboard, the Negro women were required two or three times to
give up their seats and move farther back. Finally the Negro
laborer could stand it no longer. Taking an old linoleum knife
from the bag of tools he was carrying, he rushed up to where the
women were now sitting. "Ladies," he said, with tears streaming
from his face, "don't y'all move back no doggone more! If you do,
I'm going to have to hurt you. And if anybody on here tries to
make y'all move just one more time, then my life ain't worth a
quarter. We done moved back enough, and ain't none of us gon'
move no further!"41

When the local Negro leadership in Memphis could not
wrest a guarantee from management that Negro women would be
extended the same courtesies in the downtown department stores
as were white patrons, the women began canceling their accounts
on their own accord. Thereafter, those who could afford to do so
did their shopping in periodic trips to cities as far away as St.
Louis and Chicago. "If I can't be 'Mrs.' and have the use of a
dinky dressing room on Main Street in Memphis," said one indig-
nant Negro matron, "I can be 'Madame' in a State Street salon in
Chicago."

The college sit-ins are yet another illustration of the Negro's
ambivalence toward his established leadership — and, perhaps, of
the leadership's misjudgment of the prevailing mood in the Negro
community. The college students had long been among the most
ardent supporters of the relatively conservative protest organiza-
tions, such as the NAACP. Yet the sit-ins took the NAACP by
surprise, as they did the rest of the established Negro leadership.

The man in the street is waiting and pushing and hoping;
but he is also looking around for alternatives. The disease of
racial discrimination has been with us longer than is reasonable
to expect in an enlightened society; and in an atomic age, the
traditional remedies make haste too slowly. The Negro wants to
be first class now. Anyone who fails to understand this has seri-
ously misjudged the temper of the times.

Among the Negroes of the middle class, Muhammad's call
for a united front is not wholly devoid of appeal. There has been

Tensions: Outside the Movement 161

a common notion that the Negroes' vulnerability has stemmed, at
least in part, from their own apparent inability to stand together
and make a common cause in the fight against discrimination.
The superstition that "Negroes cannot stick together, especially in
a crisis," has long been accepted as a fact. The "Great Walk" at
Montgomery and the more recent sit-ins in various communities
have done much to disprove this superstition and to make the
average Negro more receptive to proposals for group protest.
Most middle-class Negroes, however, are determined to keep
within the broad limits of the "democratic" and "American" tra-
dition. They are drawn to the idea of a united front but repelled
by the idea of a black front. Similarly, the Negro middle class
shares the increasing race-consciousness of the entire Negro com-
munity; but it interprets this as a unity-in-determination to resist
oppression, rather than as an aggressive "front."

Muhammad's Movement is one of rigid discipline, aimed at
controlling the total behavior of the individual. This factor alone
is sufficiently repulsive to dissuade the majority of the middle class
from any "committed" participation, for while the middle class is
highly conformist, it is oriented toward the prevailing values and
taboos of the general society. The middle-class Negro also refuses
to identify with the Muslims, by and large, because he associates
them with potential violence or because "the government is after
them." (Some non-Muslims report that a visit to one of the
temples has been followed by a visit from the FBI.) But above
all, the middle-class Negro is loath to add a new philosophy of
racial subordination to that already imposed by the white majority.
While acknowledging his latent hostility to the white man, he is
not willing to give over his entire life to a fanatic hatred. He is in
search of freedom, not vengeance.

Nevertheless, some small businessmen and tradesmen have
been forced to the reluctant conclusion that they must support a
movement like Muhammad's or perish. Faced with the choice,
they have joined the Movement. Muhammad has, ironically, pre-
dicted that this would happen. He has insisted that the white
man will not do business with Negroes and that integration can
only weaken the Negro businessman's support in the black com-
munity. Only race pride, he has said, and a determination to

162 Tensions: Outside the Movement

"support your own kind" can save the Negro businessman from
extinction.

But even among those who have joined or who favor the
Movement, sympathy is generally focused not on the doctrine of
racial hostility but on the issues of economic policy, race pride
and moral uplift. Such expressions as the following are not infre-
quent among the middle class (and they have their corollaries
among the more economically and socially depressed Negroes in
the slums and on the street corners) :

One Chicago businessman said, "When Mr. Muhammad urges Negroes
to build up solid economic holdings in the community, I agree with
him 100 per cent. But I can't go along with some of his other ideas."

A Philadelphia lawyer's comment was, "He's merely trying to give
the Negro the education and understanding strictly from an economic
point of view, that the Jew has been getting and using for centuries.
It would be a tough job, but organizing the Negro's financial intelli-
gence into one solid buying power would be a good thing. We don't
stick together and pool our capital as other groups do."

In Los Angeles, a real estate broker's comment was, "I don't know
too much about the other things they want, but if they can get col-
ored people to support colored business 100 per cent, I wouldn't be
able to count all the money I'd make selling houses."

A Hartford, Conn., man said ". . . if . . . [Negroes] want better
schools, good jobs and homes they should follow the leadership of
Elijah Muhammad. We need to turn to Elijah Muhammad, for he is
telling the Negro to unite because unity is the key to their freedom."42

Finally, the chance to identify with an organization that
boldly attacks social and religious conventions is for some middle-
class Negroes an irresistible challenge. This is especially true of
a handful of young "rebels" who resent the contemporary empha-
sis on conformity in general and who particularly resent the idea
of conforming to a social status that implies docility and an ad-
mission of inferiority. The few college students who have joined
the Movement are of this class, as are many of the Muslim veter-
ans of the armed services, who nurse their resentment of the "re-
ward" they received for defending the nation against its enemies.

Tensions: Outside the Movement 163

The lower-class man in the street has more immediate moti-
vations for his attitude toward the Movement. In the crowded
slums of the big cities, it is difficult to find anyone who has not
heard of Muhammad and his Black Muslims. Even among those
who have not joined the Movement, there is a strong admiration
for the Muslim leadership and often an openly expressed identifi-
cation with most of what they stand for. Typical is the statement
by a Detroit youth that Mister Muhammad and Minister Malcolm
are "telling the truth if they get killed for it," while the other
Negro leaders "keep on messing around with The Man (i.e., the
white man), when they know he ain't going to ever act right." In
the pool halls, the barber shops, the taverns and cafes and on the
street corners, Muhammad is an inevitable topic of conversation;
and more often than not, his defenders are in the majority.

To many who have despaired of ever seeing American
democracy become "color-blind," Muhammad represents the only
available alternative. The emotions of the disprivileged lie close
to the surface; and the church, which managed for so long to sub-
limate the Negro's resentments, finds its task increasingly difficult.
Even the store-front "shouting" missions have lost much of their
attraction for the Negro whose frustrations are choking him. The
Muslims are saying bluntly many of the words he wants to hear.
And the Muslims symbolize action.

Like their counterparts in the middle class, the Negroes
furthest down are impatient with the techniques of "education and
negotiation." They cannot see why people as well-educated as the
white man is alleged to be "can't tell the difference between right
and wrong." It seems to them obviously wrong that people who
are not white should be treated differently from those who are,
especially in a country where all are supposed to be equal under
the laws of the land. They reject the Negro leadership's involved
explanations about "white moderates" and "men of good will."
They do not understand how "a handful of Ku Klux congressmen
from Georgia and Mississippi can make the North, the East, the
West, the Mid- West and all the rest of the country" conform to
what is obviously an unjust position. They are inclined to doubt
the alleged "good will" of any white man, and they tend to be
ready to accept Muhammad's allegation that the white man's

164 Tensions: Outside the Movement

"tricknology" has brainwashed the Negro leaders and bought them
out with "iced tea and worthless promises."

The followers of Marcus Garvey are represented in the
Muslim temples in substantial numbers, as are the Moorish Sci-
entists. But there are also thousands of Muslims who have had no
previous contact with black nationalism. What they have had is
an unfortunate contact with the enduring corrosion of prejudice
and discrimination — and they are looking for a way out.

Some potential converts in the lower class reject the Move-
ment because of its spartan requirements. Women tend to object
to the Muslim ban on cosmetics and to various other restrictions
pertaining to dress. The requirement of strict sexual morality and
the categorical prohibition of alcohol and tobacco alienate many
young men for whom the Muslims' religious and racial teachings
are not a formidable barrier. Those who join the Movement tend
to have been so impressed with the futility of established tech-
niques for improving their lot that they are willing to make the
required adjustments in personal behavior in exchange for a new
emotional outlook.

And those who do not become members may have guilt
feelings because they are not in the Movement! In Chicago, for
example, a young deliveryman was asked if he were a Muslim.
"No sir," he replied, "but God knows I ought to be. I guess I
just ain't got guts enough." Respectable Negro leadership knows
that Muhammad's solution to the race problem is not viable, but
the lower-class man in the street is far from certain. For him it is
a question of "guts," his own guts. He seems to take for granted
that the Muslims' courage is superior to his own.

Yet this is not the whole story. Sometimes it is easier to call
oneself a coward than it is to call oneself a fool. Even in the lower
class, the man in the street is loath to give up his belief that the
American Creed will one day be realized, but his continuing faith
has exposed him only to fresh disappointments and ridicule. In
his most bitter moments, he may accuse himself of lacking the
courage to give up a dream that will never come true. He has
not yet capitulated. But his faith is sorely tested; and if racial
oppression is allowed to persist in America, only the Muslims
stand to gain.

Tensions: Outside the Movement 165

II. THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The Black Muslims deny that they have a special antipathy
for Jews, and the Muslim leaders have been unable to discover a
significant reservoir of hatred for Jews as Jews among the rank
and file. There is latent admiration for the Jewish "psychology"
and for the Jew's alleged business acumen, and there is great
sympathy for the Jews as a minority group who "were roasted like
peanuts by the white man in Europe." On the other hand, some
Muslims openly detest Jews as renegade Black Men and as leeches
on the so-called Negro community.

Among the Muslim leaders and influential laymen, there
appears to be some ambivalence about classifying the Jews as
white. There is a feeling in some quarters that the Jews, as
Semites, are "not quite white" and should be grouped with the
Arabs as members of the Black Nation. "How can we be accused
of being anti-Semitic," one Muslim minister asked, "when our
Arab brothers are Semitic?" For those who accept this implica-
tion, the Jews are traitors: Black Men who reject their true
identity, scorn their black brothers and pass themselves off as
white.

This attitude, however, is quite rare. The Muslim laity tends
simply to dismiss the Jews as white, without making further dis-
tinction. "The Jew is a white man. He is accepted as a white
man, and that is how he wants it. He can go places we can't go."
Jews may live in ghettos, but their ghettos are in white neighbor-
hoods, "except when they are complete parasites upon the Black
community." Even when a Jew lives above his own store in a
black ghetto, he is not really part of the black community, for he
fraternizes with black men only so far as is necessary to promote
his business. The Jew clings to his white identity even though he
is persecuted by other white men. "The Anglo-Saxons look down
on the Jew. The Jew hates the Anglo-Saxon but considers himself
better than a Black Man."

But there are differences among white men, and generally
you find them in certain kinds of activities. For example, "the
Anglo-Saxons are diplomats and statesmen; the Italians are crimi-
nals and racketeers; the stupid Irishmen are cops; the Germans

166 Tensions: Outside the Movement

are good scientists; the Jews are the brains of the white race."
They are the thinkers and the writers, and they are shrewd enough
to manipulate the rest of the whites — to say nothing of the so-
called Negroes. "Every Jew is a born psychologist," and he uses
his "psychology" to accomplish his ends. The so-called Negro
begs for what he wants, or relies on the white man's "Christian
spirit." The white man tries to buy his way with money. "The
Jew wastes neither his love nor his money: he 'psyches' his way
to the top. One Jew is smarter than a roomful of 'white men.' He
can spend a quarter and make a million dollars; or he can rob you
blind while he's telling you a funny joke."

The Jews are believed to have a stranglehold on public
opinion through their control of mass communication. They are
said to own the radio and television stations, along with many
magazines and newspapers. They hire gentiles to "front" for
them so as not to antagonize the public; but on crucial issues,
such as the Suez Canal, they control the thinking of the people.
And they use this power to forward the Zionist cause. Malcolm X
declares:

We make no distinction between Jews and non-Jews so long as they
are all white. To do so would be to imply that we like some whites
better than others. This would be discrimination, and we do not
believe in discrimination. However, the Jews, with the help of Chris-
tians in America and Europe, drove our Muslim brothers (i.e., the
Arabs) out of their homeland, where they had been settled for cen-
turies, and took over the land for themselves. This every Muslim
resents.

In America, the Jews sap the very life-blood of the so-called Negroes
to maintain the state of Israel, its armies and its continued aggression
against our brothers in the East. This every Black Man resents.

The European and American Christians helped to establish Israel
in order to get rid of the Jews so that they could take over their
businesses as they did the American Japanese during the war. The
scheme failed, and the joke is on the white man. The American Jews
aren't going anywhere. Israel is just an international poor house
which is maintained by money sucked from the poor suckers in
America.43

Muslims are especially resentful of Jews who live in the

Tensions: Outside the Movement 167

Negro community. "The Jew comes in and brings his family.
He opens a business and hires his wife, his mother-in-law, all his
brothers-in-law, and then he sends to the old country to get his
father and mother, sisters and brothers — even his uncles — and he
hires all of them. Meanwhile, the so-called Negroes are footing
the bill, but there isn't a black face behind a single counter in
the store." Soon the Jew will open another business — a laundro-
mat, perhaps. He will then shift some of his relatives there. Still
later he will open a liquor store, "because by now he's got enough
money to buy off the crooks downtown." Soon he follows his
Negro customer home and buys the flat he lives in. By that time,
the Jew is providing the Negro with his food, his clothes, his
services, his home and the whiskey he has to have to keep from
hating himself. "But the Jew doesn't live above the business any
more. He's moved on out to the suburbs and is living in the best
house black money can buy."

To the Negro in the black ghetto, the Jew is as highly "visi-
ble" as are the handful of Negroes who escape the ghetto and
penetrate the white communities. Consequently, the negative
image of the Jewish merchant is likely to be extremely exag-
gerated. The Jew's presence among the Negroes — and his racial
and social separation from them — make him a readily available
scapegoat, an easy target for the pent-up frustrations engendered
by the "place" the Negroes have been assigned by the larger
society.

The Jew not only dominates the Black Man economically,
the Muslims aver; he manipulates the Negro organizations as well.
The NAACP, for example, is the Jews' "tiger," and from time to
time they unleash it on the prejudiced Christians. But for all
practical purposes, the NAACP is a "paper tiger," since every
law enforcement agency in the country is in the hands of the
white man. The Jew knows this, but he keeps the so-called
Negroes agitated about such nonsense as sitting beside a white
man on a bus, thus keeping them too busy to think about building
supermarkets and department stores. Meanwhile, the white man
is so busy trying to segregate the Negroes in the back of the bus
that he has no time for business. The Jew then steps in and pro-
vides the food, clothes and services for both contestants. He may

168 Tensions: Outside the Movement

even provide the bus! And he is certain to provide the Negro
with enough money to keep the fight going.

If the Jew wants the so-called Negroes to attack a white
man, he circulates the rumor that the white man is prejudiced —
a fact that every Negro with any sense knows to begin with. If
the Jew wants to get rid of a troublesome Negro leader, the Jew
does not attack him directly. Instead, he invites a second Negro
to dinner, lets the Negro shake hands with his wife and assures
the Negro that everybody is equal. "Hearing that kind of talk
and being treated like that by a white man, the second Negro
gets so 'hopped up' he will not only go out and organize a cam-
paign against the Negro the Jew doesn't like, but he will kill his
own mother if she gets in his way before that 'fix' he got from
being invited out by the white folks wears off!" Meanwhile, the
Jew sits back and enjoys the show, while remaining a "friend" to
everybody.

These, then, are the prevailing attitudes the Black Muslims
have adopted toward the Jews. Some of the beliefs are stereo-
types held in common with the white community; some are en-
demic in the general Negro community; some are uniquely Mus-
lim. But none of the beliefs are more virulent than those held
about the white man in general. The Jews have not been singled
out as a special target of a concentrated attack. Such an emphasis
might easily occur, however, as the Black Muslims cement their
identification with Afro-Asian Islam.

The Jews, for their part, have paid little official attention
to the Muslim movement, but they do have an intelligent aware-
ness of its existence. So long as the Muslims remain a local sect
without the official recognition of international Islam, the Ameri-
can Jew sees no reason to be concerned. Negro sects and cults
abound, and while they are often given to much sound and fury,
they have seldom been a real threat to any other minority. On
the other hand, the American Jews are not unaware of the pres-
sures of international Islam on the national state of Israel, nor of
the attempts of some segments of international Islam to enlist
anti- Jewish support wherever it may be found.

At least one United States Senator has seen enough evidence
of anti-Semitism in the Black Muslim movement to warrant bring-

Tensions: Outside the Movement 169

ing the organization to the attention of Congress. Senator Ken-
neth B. Keating of New York, a Presbyterian, deplored this
"anti- Jewish propaganda":

A very disturbing development has been the emergence of a new
hate group in the United States which call themselves "Moslems."
[Their] leader preaches a cult of racism for Negroes and extreme
anti-Semitism.14

Surprisingly, Mr. Keating saw the Muslims as reflecting "a new
trend in Moscow," rather than domestic competitions or the
machinations of international Islam. He emphasized that "the
name adopted by the fanatical organization" insulted the members
of the Moslem faith; and he was careful to point out that orthodox
Moslems have "absolutely no relationship to this group," whereas
"it obviously serves the Communist interests to promote dissen-
sions among Negroes in this country and to incite hatred against
Americans of Jewish faith."

III. THE AMERICAN ISLAMIC COMMUNITY

The Black Muslims are almost unanimously rejected by the
orthodox Moslem groups in America. Race is probably not a
major factor in this rejection: there is a marked clannishness
among American Moslems of European descent, but some of
the earliest Moslem converts in America were Negro followers
of Soufi Abdul-Hamid, an American Negro who embraced Islam
during his travels in Asia,45 and Negro Moslems remain scattered
about the country in small numbers. The rejection is based,
rather, on Muhammad's extreme racial views, his emphatic mili-
tancy and his unhistoric teachings about the Black Nation. Ameri-
can Moslems do not wish to be identified with such doctrines.

The Black Muslims, in return, assert that whatever the
white man touches, he taints. Just as the so-called Negroes, in
their attempts to appropriate the white man's culture, have been
corrupted by its disvalues, so the American Moslems have suf-
fered the corrosive influences of white, Western Christianity. In
their yearning to gain the white man's approval, they sometimes
behave suspiciously like the blue-eyed devils themselves. "No
Muslim will reject another Muslim," Malcolm X argues, "except

170 Tensions: Outside the Movement

where the devils have made him forget who he is." The American
Moslems who join the white man in denouncing the Black
Muslims are little better than the so-called Negroes who have
been "Tom-ing" for generations. When they finally see the Move-
ment through their own Muslim eyes, rather than through the
distorted lenses of the white Christians, they will rally to Muham-
mad and recognize him as the true Messenger of Allah Himself.
The Federation of Islamic Associations is the official Mos-
lem organization in the United States and Canada. However,

... the Negro society in Chicago led by Elijah Muhammad is not
affiliated and it is not recognized as truly Moslem. Although he con-
ducts the largest Arabic school in the United States, and claims to use
the Qur'an as the basis for his teachings, the Federation officers . . .
have remained suspicious of him.46

Some Moslem leaders, such as Jamil Diab of Chicago, have
issued statements dissociating themselves and their followers from
the Black Muslims. Diab denounced the Muslims as "a cult
totally lacking in the requisites which constitute any Moslem
Group." He asserted that they have "penetrated into the Afro-
American society . . . [where] they propagate their views in the
name of Islam. They start controversies everywhere . . . [and
carry on] propaganda in an aggressive manner." Because of them,
"an insidious stigma" has become attached to all Islamic societies
in America.

Muhammad smiles mysteriously when Shaikh Diab's criti-
cisms are laid before him, for it is rumored that the Shaikh (who
is a Palestinian Arab) was once a close adviser to the Messenger
and that he taught Arabic for several years at the University of
Islam in Chicago. Muhammad and Diab are said to have split
over questions of ritual. The Shaikh apparently sought to form
the Muslims into an orthodox Moslem organization, but prac-
tically none of the rank and file followed his lead.

Another challenger to Muhammad's religious authenticity
and to his leadership of Americans in the Islamic movement is
Talib Ahmad Dawud, bearded leader of the Muslim Brotherhood,
USA. Dawud, who was converted by Gulam Yaslum, an Ahma-
diyya missionary from India, has described Muhammad as "plain
Elijah Poole of SandersviUe, Georgia," and "no Muslim." In

Tensions: Outside the Movement 171

an abortive bid for the Black Muslim leadership, Dawud lent his
name to a series of articles in a Chicago newspaper aimed at
exposing Muhammad and discrediting him with his followers.
Mr. Dawud, who had just returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca,
based his arguments against Muhammad's authenticity primarily
upon an assertion that the Hajj Committee, which rules on the
acceptability of Moslem pilgrims, would not admit the self-styled
Messenger to the Holy City. Muhammad was, in fact, received
in Mecca a few weeks later, and Dawud was badly trounced.

Actually, it never seemed likely that the Imam would make
any serious inroads on the Black Muslim membership. His own
brotherhood has only a few hundred members, many of whom
are popular entertainers or musicians — Dawud's wife is jazz singer
Dakota Staton — and they seem to have none of the fanatical
devotion to their leader that the Muslims show for Muhammad.
Nor does Dawud enjoy unqualified recognition as a leader in
the American Moslem community.

Most of the authentic Moslem groups in this country have
stood back from the fray, and their aloofness has strengthened
rather than weakened the strategy of the Black Muslim leaders.
Left to his own devices, Muhammad is able to exert a kind of
papal absolutism in the direction and development of his Move-
ment. At the same time, he has been able to cultivate the good
will and respect of a significant corps of informal representatives
of Afro-Asian Islam. His temples are often visited by Moslem
students studying in America, some of whom address his fol-
lowers or participate in the temple affairs.

In Harlem, an organization called Asian-African Drums
serves as an important liaison between the Black Muslims and
various Moslem nationals from Asia and Africa, particularly Arab
nationals. The Muslims do no proselytizing at the Drums meet-
ings, which are kept on the level of friendly contact. The Drums
organization is headed by Abdul Basit Naeem, a Pakistani Mos-
lem, who has served as Muhammad's chief apologist and inter-
preter to the world of orthodox Islam. To Mr. Naeem, Muham-
mad is "the humblest of all important black men alive ... ex-
tremely gentle, very courteous and kind . . . [and] the core of Mr.
Elijah Muhammad's teachings is, of course, the faith of Islam. . . .

172 Tensions: Outside the Movement

The book of Mr. Elijah Muhammad is the book of ALL Muslims,
known as the Holy Qur'an." Further, "his work and teachings are
not entirely unknown to other Moslems . . . including the beloved
president of the United Arab Republic, Gamal Abdel Nasser."47

Mr. Naeem, an ardent supporter of the Movement, is a
Pakistani journalist and lecturer with twelve years' residence in
the United States. He is a graduate of a Midwestern university
and the publisher of a Moslem magazine called The Moslem
World and the U.S.A.

Not all the contacts with extranational Moslems in America
have been through Black Muslim-sponsored organizations. The
Black Muslims have participated in various Moslem affairs held
on the campuses of some American universities, such as the
celebration of Pakistan Independence Day at the University of
Southern California in 1958,48 and they have been represented
at conferences concerned with the interests of various Moslem
states. At one such conference, held in Hollywood in 1958 and
sponsored by Dr. Mohammad T. Mehdi of the Arab Information
Center in San Francisco, Malcolm X boldly demanded attention
for the Black Muslims as a potential power in the sphere of inter-
national politics. "The Arabs, as a colored people," he said,
"should and must make more effort to reach the millions of col-
ored people in America who are related to the Arabs by blood.
These millions of colored peoples would be completely in sym-
pathy with the Arab cause!"49

IV. THE WHITE COMMUNITY

One might expect — from the Muslims' diatribes against the
white man and from their commitment to retaliation — that there
would be constant open conflict between the Muslims and the
white community. But few open battles have been joined thus
far. The Black Muslims do not pretend to love the white man,
but they avoid overt antagonism. They shun the white community
entirely, except for requisites of work or business, and they do
not seek the white man's social acceptance. Muslim women par-
ticularly are forbidden contact with either sex of the white race,
on the theory that "no white man has honorable intentions toward

Tensions: Outside the Movement 173

any black woman" and that white women are "immoral by
nature." The white women are said to corrupt the minds of the
black women, who then try to imitate them by "displaying their
bodies, neglecting their children and abandoning their men."

In his communication with the white man, the Muslim tends
to be both polite and direct, a technique which helps to avoid
tension and misunderstanding. Speaking to a white group, Mal-
colm X declared:

I don't want you to think I'm being disrespectful to you as white
people. I am being frank, and I think a frank statement will give
you a better insight into the mind of the Black Man than statements
you get from people who call themselves "Negroes," and who usually
tell you what they want you to hear ... [in the interest of creating]
a better possibility of getting some of the crumbs you may let fall
from your table. Well, I am not looking for crumbs, so I am not
trying to disillusion you. . . . Diplomacy fools people. Diplomacy
misleads people. It is better to be frank. . . .50

The white community is constantly assured that the Mus-
lims are not anti-white simply "because they tell you what they
think, nor anti-American because they say that America made
our fathers slaves and refuses to give us civil rights." Malcolm
assures the white man that "you can go anywhere among us and
receive more courtesy and real respect than you can among the
so-called Negro leaders who lick your hand for crumbs." But
the white man must wake up, for "the Negro you used to know
is dead."

According to Malcolm X, much of the white man's ignor-
ance of the Black Man's true nature results from his habit of
picking Negro leaders who, "since their jobs depend upon his
pleasure, only report to him what will make him happy. But
these leaders don't have things under control. And they can't
control this generation with anything less than freedom and
justice." The white man's educational system also contributes to
his unrealistic view of things.

The educational system ... is designed to make you think you are
God. . . . There is no one else like you and everyone else is below
you. . . . You can't blame the American [man in the street] for look-
ing down on the Black Man when every day he is brainwashed by
the movies, the television, radio and the newspapers. ... He is taught

174 Tensions: Outside the Movement

in school that he is the best, and that anyone not as white as you
cannot be on your level.51

The white man is urged to treat the Negro with respect and
to provide an opportunity for him to learn "something about him-
self." Only then can there be any hope of peace between the
races. When the Negro learns the truth about himself, he will
not seek integration with the white man; he will be proud to asso-
ciate with his own kind. When this happens, the white man will
no longer have to worry about the Negro becoming his "brother-
in-law," and each race will respect the other for wanting to main-
tain racial purity. As things are now, the Negro has not been
educated: he has been trained.

He is like a dog — a watchdog. You don't give him credit for intel-
ligence, you give him credit for being well-trained. You sic him on
the Japanese and tell him to bite them, and he will run out and bite
the Japanese. You tell him to bite, and he will bite the Germans, the
Koreans. He will bite anyone you say bite. Now you don't give him
any credit for having done a good job. You give yourself credit for
having trained him so well. Now when he comes back from biting
the Germans and the Japanese, you can hang his mother on a tree
and have his wife before his eyes and he will stand there whimpering
with his knees knocking and his tail between his legs. Why? Because
he's waiting for you to say "sic 'em!" That's what he's been trained
to do.52

The white men in America are like diners at a banquet
table. The Negro is there, too, but the white men pass the dishes
back and forth in front of him without ever letting him be served.
The Negro is not a diner; he is simply at the table looking on.
The white men think he should be satisfied with being present:
"To be in the presence of so many fine people who are enjoying
themselves at such a sumptuous feast — you'd think he would be
grateful." But the Negro has got knots in his stomach because
he is hungry; and since he helped to kill the game, he thinks it's
his right to eat. Now.

In the same way, the white man tries to pacify the Negro
by telling him that he is a citizen. But the Negro is waking up
to that. He has learned that he is a full-fledged citizen in wartime
and at taxtime, but at no other time.

Tensions: Outside the Movement 175

They tell us that we are all citizens, that we were born in this coun-
try. Well, a cat can have kittens in an oven but that doesn't make
them biscuits! The Black Man in America can never be called an
American until he is enjoying what America is offering to everybody
else. . . . Twenty million black people here in America today are called
"second-class" citizens. We don't accept that. You are either a citizen
or you are not a citizen. No country has citizenship by degrees.53

In the summer of 1960, Muhammad broke precedent and
allowed whites to attend some of his public rallies. Until then,
no whites had been admitted to any group addressed by the Mes-
senger; and whites are still barred from the temples themselves.
The sudden change in policy was partly inspired by criticism which
likened the "crepe-black" Muslim organization to the "lily-white"
white citizens councils. But it was equally inspired by Muham-
mad's certainty of mass support from the Negroes of Chicago and
Harlem, and his desire to demonstrate his strength to any whites
who cared to come.

In Harlem, where one of the "open" rallies was held, Mal-
colm X announced that "because of the grave race crisis that
faces the Western world [and] to which white America is trying
to blind itself, these white people need someone to tell them what
time it is." In the audience of seven thousand people was a
sprinkling of whites, scattered throughout the hall. Some of these
whites joined in the Muslim prayers, facing east with their palms
upraised, and some even applauded parts of Muhammad's ad-
dress. Most, however, simply sat and took notes or stared in
unbelief.

While the white man in the street has not commented, the
Movement has often excited his attention. On learning of its
existence (but almost never with any detailed knowledge), some
individuals and groups have regarded it with a degree of approval.
A white woman in Boston applauded Malcolm X's extended
interview on radio station WMEX and opined that "this Move-
ment will do more for the Negro and the whole country than
anything the Negroes have tried so far." A well-known Texas
millionaire, perhaps not unsympathetic to Muhammad's advocacy
of racial separation, is alleged to have shown his approval of
the Movement by an outright gift of several thousand dollars.
But most white people who learn of the Movement tend to con-

176 Tensions: Outside the Movement

sider it a preternaturally extreme and dangerous social aber-
ration. They are anxious to be reassured that it "has reached its
peak" and that "most Negroes do not really feel like that."

The Movement has caught the attention of researchers in
colleges and universities across the country. Professors and gradu-
ate students in such widely separated schools as Harvard, Rad-
cliffe, Union Theological Seminary and the Universities of Chi-
cago, Missouri and Michigan are now studying the Black Muslims.
Law enforcement agencies and their libraries in many cities across
the country are amassing data on the Movement.

The tendency in the white-controlled mass media until very
recent times was to ignore the Movement, but its importance in
the current racial crisis has warmed the microphones and loosened
the typewriter keys. Apparently these media now feel that the
people have a right to know about the Muslims, who are un-
doubtedly the fastest-growing movement in the country and
potentially one of the most dangerous. Since 1959, extensive
coverage has been given the Muslims in Time, The New York
Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Reader's Digest, The Re-
porter, U. S. News and World Report, Chicago's American, Provi-
dence Bulletin, The Denver Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Springfield
(Massachusetts) Daily News, Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, New
York Post, The Detroit Free Press, The Boston Herald, The Min-
neapolis Tribune, The Boston Globe and many other newspapers
and periodicals.

What do they say, the writers in these "white" media, which
mold opinion for millions of Americans? What is their image of
the Black Muslims? Most of the news stories are essentially
descriptive; almost all turn hopefully to the established Negro
leadership for interpretation of the Movement. However, some
eidtorial comment has appeared.

Time refers to Elijah Muhammad as a "scowling, incendiary
speaker . . . pouring out his scorn upon all 'white devils,' 'satis-
fied black men,' the 'poison' Bible, Christianity's 'slavemaster doc-
trine,' and America's 'white for white' justice." Time considers
Muhammad to be a "purveyor of ... cold black hatred . . .
calmly feeding the rankling frustration of urban Negroes." The
Muslim leader is held to be "well beyond the run-of-the-street

Tensions: Outside the Movement 177

crackpot Negro nationalist groups . . . [and] of rising concern to
respectable Negro civic leaders, to the [NAACP], to police de-
partments in half a dozen cities, and to the FBI."54

The Christian Science Monitor is more positive in its views.
While finding that "Mr. Muhammad's counsel is not entirely free
of animosity," it suggests that out of Muhammad's guidance
"appears to have come an environment which . . . has made
possible a degree of middle-class respectability for many Negroes
whose lives before had been crude at best." Yet the Monitor
recognizes the Black Muslims as "one of the most controversial
and curious organizations of Negroes"55 and generously estimates
that the Movement has gathered "some 200,000 of the 20,000,000
non-whites into its fold in the last three years."56

"It was inevitable," says The Denver Post "that some Ne-
groes would prove unable to keep their heads as the struggle [over
racial discrimination] continued." And it warns that "the excesses
of a Negro hate group can poison the whole integration move-
ment in the United States and jeopardize the progress that has
already been made."57 The Providence Bulletin observes that
"thousands of Negroes are turning their backs on Christianity
and embracing a highly nationalistic religion that takes Islam
for its spiritual basis." The Bulletin believes that "the Movement
has weight" and that "Muhammad cannot be laughed at as Father
Divine has been. . . . The Black Muslim Movement is a force
to take seriously, . . . [for] the Messenger isn't just a-whistling
'Dixie.' "58

In Boston, the Herald deplores Muhammad's "black su-
premacy" doctrines and declares them to be "as disgraceful and
inflammatory as those of the Ku Klux Klan." It points out that
"on a Harlem street corner where a member of the Temple
harangues a group it is wise for a white man to pass by quickly" —
a circumstance which is, "of course, deplored by the best Negro
civic leaders."59 The Detroit Free Press asks "Is the [Muslim]
cult dangerous?" and then assures its readers that "Detroit police
keep an eye on it. State Police routinely pick up lists of students
attending the University of Islam. The FBI watches."60

On September 3, 1959, Bill Stout of CBS-TV in Los An-
geles reported that "the Negro group called Moslems, a religious

178 Tensions: Outside the Movement

sect dedicated to black supremacy and the destruction of the white
race," had mushroomed from 300 members to "more than 3,000"
in Los Angeles in six months. He quoted "a Los Angeles leader
of the Moslem group [as saying] at a recent meeting, 4No torture
of the whites — just annihilation.' " The TV newscaster called
the Los Angeles temple "the biggest in the country," and he mar-
veled that there had been "no public notice of the Moslem sect
in this area." What Mr. Stout probably did not know is that in
Los Angeles, as in many other cities, there is (or was) a tacit
agreement between law enforcement officials and the major news
media to bar publicity about the Movement. Without the aid
of the press, it was hoped, the movement would soon wither.

That hope persists, and The Reporter magazine finds it
"difficult to see how a militant movement like the Temples of
Islam can attract a wide following." It quotes with apparent
finality the sentiments of a Negro integration leader who told that
magazine "I don't think they'll get much stronger," but who then
immediately asserted that "We [Negroes] have a right to our
crackpots as you do to yours." The Reporter predicts that "Mal-
colm X may yet be an executive in the Urban League, but Elijah
Muhammad is more likely to end as Marcus Garvey did — with
little left but pictures of himself addressing huge crowds years
before."61 However, Pulitzer Prizewinner Harry Ashmore, writing
in The Boston Globe, tempers his similar optimism. The Mus-
lims, he feels, "are not themselves going anywhere. But as long
as they are around and talking it is a reasonable assumption that
the great mass of American Negro people are not going to be
content to stand still."62

7 Tensions:

Inside the Movement

For the time being, the Black Muslims are presenting a
monolithic face to the outside world. They are on the upswing,
rapidly gaining membership and power and their resultant excite-
ment and self-confidence breed a natural sense of unity. They
feel beset by a powerful enemy — a supposed threat which impels
them to minimize internal conflicts and pull together. And they
are genuinely unified in their dedication to Elijah Muhammad,
the Messenger, whose force of personality overrides any divisive
tensions.

Yet some tensions are already perceptible within the Move-
ment, and these seem likely to increase with time. There are
problems both of definition and of control. As the Movement
solidifies, it will have to make more and more explicit its rela-
tionship to both the white American and the international Islamic
worlds. For the moment, the Muslim leaders are purposefully
vague on these points. When they must declare themselves, the
present quiet disagreements within the leadership will most likely
become sharp and bitter factionalism. And as the Movement
grows in size and influence, it will become more and more a
tempting prize for those who covet power. Rivalries within the
leadership already exist, as well as a latent reliance on force.
These rivalries may erupt quickly when Muhammad dies.

The future of the Movement — and of the world on which
it has an impact — will be greatly affected by these internal ten-
sions. They are, of course, extremely difficult to pin down pre-
cisely; they are the Movement's best-guarded secrets. But a cer-
tain amount of information is available, and from this a broad
outline of the internal tensions can be fairly accurately sketched.

179

180 Tensions: Inside the Movement

I. THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER

The Long Road from Sandersville

"And after these things I saw another angel come down
from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened
with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying,
Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation
of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit. . . ."

The Supreme Wisdom, sacred text of the Black Muslim
Movement, teaches that this angel having great power (mentioned
in the eighteenth chapter of Revelation) was "no other than
Master W. F. Fard Muhammad, the Great Mahdi." The Mahdi
came for the express purpose of enlightening the so-called Negroes
and pronouncing judgment on the white devils, who had enslaved
the Black Nation and still hold them in "mental slavery." The
Great Mahdi "announced the immediate doom of America," for
"America committed suicide when she brought the so-called
Negroes into slavery." He urged all Black Men to resume their
true religion, Islam, and their true identity. Each Black Man who
took this momentous step he blessed with a holy name of Allah's
— on written application and for a ten-dollar fee. This name was
the applicant's "true name," concealed from him by the Slave-
masters and restored through Fard's divine knowledge. The
restoration of this true name at once identified the Muslim with
the Black Nation and provided him with an Afro-Asian history.
"The name," the Muslims say, "is everything."

Among those blessed by the Mahdi during his sojourn in
the Wilderness of North America was the son of a Georgia
preacher for whom the devil-ridden city of Detroit had proved
to be less than the Promised Land. This convert's "slave name"
had been Elijah Poole; the Great Mahdi rechristened him Elijah
Karriem and later, to show his increasing favor, Elijah Mu-
hammad.

Poole (who has also been known as Gulam Bogans, Mu-
hammad Rassouli, Elijah Muck Muhd and various other aliases)
was born in Sandersville, Georgia, a rural hamlet1 midway between
Macon and Augusta, on October 7, 1897. He is one of thirteen

Tensions: Inside the Movement 181

children born to Wall and Marie Poole. His father was a Baptist
preacher — a fact which is doubtless reflected in Elijah's charis-
matic gifts — and both parents had been slaves of a white family
of the same surname. Elijah completed the fourth grade. At six-
teen he left home. Ten years later, in 1923, he and his wife
Clara (Evans), with their two children, moved to Detroit. Poole
had heard rhapsodic praise of the city from Negroes of his own
home town who had moved there after the end of World War I,
but the rhapsodies turned out to have been exaggerated. He
worked in factories, holding several different jobs, until the
Depression set in late in 1929. A year or so later he came under
the spell of Fard, who, he recalls gratefully, took him "out of
the gutter in the streets of Detroit and in three and a half years
taught [him] the knowledge of Islam."

From the start, Muhammad's relationship with Fard seems
to have been a close one. One old-timer remembers Muhammad
as "doing errands for the Prophet" (as Fard himself was then
known) and helping him "put out some kind of paper." In 1932,
Muhammad established the Southside Mosque — later called Tem-
ple No. 2 — in Chicago and apparently ran it for some time. The
following year, when Fard was trying to elude the police, he
sought refuge with Muhammad in Chicago. A Detroit Muslim
had been convicted in 1932 of a sacrificial killing of one of his
"brothers."2 Thereupon, says Muhammad:

He [Fard] was persecuted, sent to jail in 1932, and ordered out of
Detroit, Michigan, May 26, 1933. He came to Chicago in the same
year, [was] arrested almost immediately and placed behind prison
bars. He submitted himself with all humility to his persecutors. Each
time he was arrested he sent for me that I may see and learn the
price of truth for us (the so-called Negroes).3

Muhammad's willingness to conceal Fard and brave the law for
his sake must have cemented their mutual trust and respect.
Muhammad soon became Fard's chief minister and gradually took
over the leadership of the Detroit temple. Before long, he was
charged by Fard with full administrative responsibility for the
Movement and was being groomed as Fard's successor.

Not all of the Black Nation in Detroit took kindly to Mu-
hammad's favored position with the Mahdi. Some of his antag-

182 Tensions: Inside the Movement

onists rejected his second rechristening (from Elijah Karriem to
Elijah Muhammad). When Fard disappeared in June 1934, with
Muhammad as his logical successor, they immediately spread
rumors that Muhammad had induced Fard to offer himself as a
human sacrifice. Fard was still considered a prophet, not an
incarnation of Allah and it was a common belief among his fol-
lowers that a Muslim who immolated himself could become
"Savior of the world." The rumors were never substantiated,
of course, and they do not square with anything that is known
about the relationship between the two men. Still, it is interesting
to note that Fard is honored by Muslims everywhere as the
"Savior" and is celebrated as such every year on his birthday,
February 26.

Whatever its merits, this unsparing hostility to Muhammad
split the Movement into factions. After Fard's disappearance,
Muhammad withdrew to Chicago and designated Temple No. 2
as the new headquarters of the Movement. His faction became
known as the "Temple People" and their meeting places as
"Muhammad's Temples of Islam." Fard was deified and was
thenceforth referred to as Allah; Muhammad took upon himself
the mantle of Prophet and presented himself as the sole Messenger
of Allah. Human sacrifice was never again mentioned as a Mus-
lim doctrine. But the most important change was an expansion
of the horizon of ambition: Muhammad was determined to bring
into the light of the divine knowledge every Black Man in
America.

As his chief minister — a post roughly analogous to the one
he had held under Fard — Muhammad appointed a Haitian, Theo-
dore Rozier, who had never known Fard. The dissident factions
repudiated Rozier on the ground that he "never saw the Savior"
and that his "second-hand revelation" was not sufficient qualifi-
cation for the role. Their real objection, however, seems to have
been to Muhammad's audacity, for he was already beginning to
identify himself as the only channel through which Fard's "truth"
could be brought to the sleeping Black Nation. In any case,
Rozier was not a successful proselytizer; he could not capture
the imagination of the people. Muhammad gradually won back
most of the dissidents — his own brother, Wilfred X, is now minis-

Tensions: Inside the Movement 183

ter of the Detroit temple — but the Movement made only small
inroads on the Negro community. Not until the late 1940s, when
"the Big X" became the right hand of the Messenger, did the
Movement begin to catch fire.

Muhammad's association with Fard, "the Supreme Being
among all Black Men," invests him with a status and power that
have never been successfully challenged. The Muslim lay brother
often expresses the wish, gravely and wistfully, that he might have
seen Allah (that is, Fard), much as the devout Christian wishes
he might have known Jesus when he was on earth. But Muham-
mad proclaims in The Supreme Wisdom: "I know Allah, and I
am with him." And in Chicago he informed some ten thousand
followers and curiosity seekers:

I am not trembling. I am the man, I am the Messenger. ... I came
directly from God. I am guided by God. I am in communication
with God, and I know God. If God is not with me ... protecting
me, how can I come and say things no other man has said and get
away with it?4

The Messenger assures his listeners that the world will soon know
who sent him, and he admonishes the Negro Christians that "God
is here in person; so stop looking for a dead Jesus and pray to
HIM . . . who is ALIVE and not a spook."5

Muhammad is known not only as "Messenger" and
"Prophet" but also as "Spiritual Head of the Muslims in the
West," "Divine Leader" and "The Reformer." His ministers most
often refer to him as "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad" or as
"The Messenger of Allah to the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in
the Wilderness of North America." Occasionally the less formal
reference "Brother Elijah Muhammad" is used.

Muhammad is a slight, brown, quickly energetic man of
about sixty-three. He often works an eighteen-hour day, pausing
for his one daily meal at six in the evening. In his private life he
is calm and temperate — a sharp contrast to his writings and to the
fanatical intensity he inspires in the tens of thousands who call
him the Messenger. His face is rather lean and angular, although
his receding hairline broadens his forehead in a suggestion of
strength and intelligence. His lips are thin; his eyes quick and

184 Tensions: Inside the Movement

penetrating. He has no features that are pronouncedly within the
Negro stereotype. One recent writer has described him as "a
slight man with a zealot's intense solemnity . . . [and] a quick,
intuitive intelligence."6 He lives on Chicago's South Side and has
an unusually large family, six sons and a daughter.

For the most part, Muhammad speaks, writes and directs
the activities of his burgeoning movement from his Chicago head-
quarters, Muhammad's Temple of Islam No. 2. Administrative
policy has been set chiefly through written directives and confer-
ences in Chicago and enforced through a few lieutenants of dem-
onstrated loyalty. But as the Movement has gathered momentum,
the Messenger himself has had to travel more and more. The
response his presence evokes in the black masses is phenomenal,
especially in the light of his barely literate oral delivery. Wherever
he has gone, his visits have been followed by spurts in the temple
membership.

The announcement that the Messenger is to visit a particular
temple is a signal for feverish activity on the part of the members.
Cleanliness, always emphasized in the teachings at the temple, is
given additional stress. In the Muslim homes, the best furnishings
and utensils are brought from under wraps and put on display.
The Muslim restaurants and other businesses are given new coats
of paint, and pictures of the Messenger are prominently displayed.
All this despite the fact that Muhammad rarely sees the results.
He almost always remains in seclusion at his hotel or in the home
of the host minister until it is time for his address, and he seldom
misses the first flight available after his public appearance.

Several days before the Messenger is scheduled to arrive,
members of the FOI security corps cover every inch of the route
he is to travel from the airport to the temple. On the day of his
arrival, Muslim guards are posted at strategic points along his
route several hours in advance. Each guard is briefed as to pre-
cisely what he should do in the event of an emergency. The
penalty for carelessness or error is severe.

The Messenger always travels with a personal security force,
comprised of three or four members of the FOI from Temple
No. 2. This guard is often headed by Supreme Captain Raymond
Sharrieff in person. When Muhammad deplanes, he is always pre-

Tensions: Inside the Movement 185

ceded and covered from behind by this personal guard. As soon as
he is on the ground, the local security force takes over. The Mes-
senger is immediately surrounded by a force of from twelve to
twenty men, and other Muslims are scattered "inconspicuously"
among the crowds at the airport. An additional force in several
automobiles takes over as he leaves the airport, some preceding
and others following the car in which the Messenger is riding. The
FOI captain of the local temple, riding in one of the lead cars, ex-
changes signals with individual guards previously stationed along
the way. Should the guard not return the proper signal, the entire
force is put on "emergency alert" and an alternate route is chosen.

Muhammad's arrival at the temple or auditorium causes
much excitement. The crowds usually begin arriving two or three
hours in advance. By the time Muhammad arrives, those who can
be accommodated in the hall have been searched and seated —
men to the right, women to the left. The Muslim women march
in as a separate group and occupy a section of the hall reserved for
them. They are dressed in flowing white gowns and shawls, and
wear no makeup. Scores of Muslim brothers are on security duty
inside the building — at the doors and in the restrooms and hall-
ways. The hall will have been thoroughly searched at least twice
before the public is admitted, and roving patrols are constantly
on the lookout for trouble. As many as a hundred men may be
assigned the task of securing the inside of the building and search-
ing each member of the audience.

Outside, Muslims are on constant patrol on foot or in cars,
ranging several blocks around the area. In a meeting held in
Atlanta in September 1960, the FOI even placed a patrol on the
roof of the Magnolia Ballroom, where the Prophet was to speak.
In Boston, a few months earlier, the FOI set up a counterwatch
on what they took to be "agents" watching them from an office
building across the street from the John Hancock Hall, where
Muhammad was speaking.

When the Messenger finally arrives outside the hall, an
Honor Guard escorts him along the sidewalk down a double row
of Muslims and so into the building. (At a meeting held in the
Uline Arena in Washington, D. C, in the summer of 1959,
Muhammad marched from his car down an aisle of eight hundred

186 Tensions: Inside the Movement

Black Muslims, standing shoulder to shoulder all the way from
the street to the rostrum.) As he enters the hall and comes before
his audience, there is a quiet stir, an excitement compounded of
awe, pride and reverence. This decorous intensity of response is
maintained throughout his speech, punctuated only by the usual
affirmations: "That's right! That's right!" But the Messenger's
charismatic presence seems to cause a vibrancy in the air — a
vibrancy that lingers long after he has finished his speech and
departed, quickly and quietly, from the hall.

In the informality of his home, Muhammad conveys the
impression of an almost wistful gentility and kindness, and the
visitor is immediately impressed by his deep feeling of responsi-
bility for "his people." He is peculiarly sensitive to attacks by
Negro leadership and is perplexed that "the educated ones who
should know more than the rest of us cannot see the truth of what
I am teaching." He attempts to avoid controversy with other
Negro leaders, believing that eventually all will recognize that "the
salvation of the so-called Negro in this country depends upon the
unity of all Black Men" and that this unity can come only when
Negroes are willing to "see the white man for what he is" and
reject him.

Muhammad has a personal antipathy toward white domina-
tion that borders on the pathological, and it is almost exclusively
in this reference that his passions are likely to escape restraint.
Yet he denies teaching hatred.

They say that I am a preacher of racial hatred, but the fact is that the
white people don't like the truth, especially if it speaks against
them. ... It is a terrible thing for such people ... to charge me with
teaching race hatred when their feet are on my people's neck and
they tell us to our face that they hate the black people. . . . Remember
now, they even teach you that you must not hate them for hating
you.7

Muhammad enjoins his followers never to initiate violence
but to retaliate if they are attacked. He ridicules the whites for
demanding that Black Men turn the other cheek, when they them-
selves will kill even without provocation.

It is against the law of nature. The Christian government of America
can't do it. The Pope of Rome can't do it. If you and I don't wake

Tensions: Inside the Movement 187

up to that knowledge and execute the law of an eye for an eye, we
might as well be dead and forgotten.8

The white man's greatest fear, Muhammad believes, is that
the Black Man will know the truth about him and will unite
against him. As a result, the white community slanders the Mus-
lims and treat them like criminals. The white men "claim the truth
to be subversive and hate-teaching. . . . They tap our telephones,
eavesdrop and follow us around . . . use tape-recording machines
[and] the hypocrites and stool pigeons among us to keep up to
date on what we say and do. They are even bold enough to ask
[our own] relatives to help them do [us] evil!"9 This accusation
is only slightly if at all exaggerated. The FBI and local police do
keep Muhammad and his Movement under close scrutiny, from
outside and probably also from within.

Muhammad seems to live comfortably in this atmosphere of
hostility and counter-hostility, but he is rarely without an aware-
ness of danger. He observes characteristically:

I have it from the mouth of God that the enemy had better try to
protect my life and see that I continue to live. Because if anything
happens to me, I will be the last one that they murder. And if any
of my followers are harmed, ten of the enemy's best ones will be
killed.10

The Messenger has already tangled twice with the law — and
lost. In 1934, when he refused to transfer his child from a Uni-
versity of Islam to a public school, he was found guilty of con-
tributing to the delinquency of a minor and was placed on six
months' probation. In 1942 he was arrested by federal authorities
in Chicago and this time was obliged to serve time in prison. In
a story headlined "12 Negro Chiefs Seized by FBI in Sedition
Raid," the Chicago Tribune gave the following account:

Arrest of more than 80 Negroes, members and leaders of three
organizations, on charges of sedition, conspiracy, and violation of
the draft laws was announced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
here.

Twelve of those arrested are considered leaders in the groups. They
were charged with . . . conspiracy to promote the success of the
enemy, making false statements to those about to be inducted into
the armed forces, [and] disrupting morale and causing mutiny.

188 Tensions: Inside the Movement

. . . The three organizations are known as "The Peace Movement of
Ethiopia," . . . "The Brotherhood of Liberty for Black People of
America," and an organization known as "The Temple of Islam." . . .
Elijah Poole, who calls himself Elijah Muhammad, was [among those]
arrested. . . . Elijah is also known as Elijah Muck Muhd, and is
known as "The Prophet."11

Arrested with Muhammad was Lenzie Karien, identified as
one of the Ministers of Islam. Both Muhammad and Karien ad-
mitted sympathy for Japan, but Chicago FBI Chief Johnson said
"no definite connection had been found by his men between Negro
organizations and Japanese activity in this country."12 Nonethe-
less, indictments were drawn on the ground that the three organi-
zations were "alleged to have taught Negroes that their interests
were in a Japanese victory, and that they were racially akin to
the Japanese. . . . J. Albert Woll, U. S. District Attorney, . . .
said the defendants made statements 'as vicious as any ever un-
covered by a grand jury.'"13 For these "vicious" statements,
Muhammad went to federal prison at Milan, Michigan, until 1946.
He apparently was able to direct the Movement even while in jail,
for it gained strength during those years.

After his release, Muhammad repeated and elaborated on the
sentiments that had brought him to jail. He taught that the white
man is — and has been since his creation — the oppressor of all
who are not white; and he asserted that all who are not white are,
by the white man's own social definition, black. Consequently,
he reasoned, it made little sense for Negroes in this country to
fight against the Japanese, who are equally victims of the white
man's hatred and color prejudice. World War II was not a battle
in which the American Negro ought to have been forced to par-
ticipate. The Black Man's war is "the Battle of Armageddon,"
which will be fought "in the wilderness of North America." It is,
in Muhammad's words, "a battle for freedom, justice and equality
— to success or to the death."

Muhammad is ostensibly not troubled about what direction
the Movement will take when he returns to Allah, or about who
will succeed him. "Allah will see that the work is carried on," he
insists with conviction. Yet Muhammad, more than anyone else,
must recall the schisms that rent the Movement after Fard disap-
peared in 1934, and it would be hazardous to take his apparent

Tensions: Inside the Movement 189

naivete at face value. He must sense, as many observers do, that
the struggle for succession is already on and that the image of the
united front that the Black Nation has labored so hard to build
will once again be fractured when the Messenger's voice is heard
no more. It will be interesting to see who, if anyone, will be able
to pick up the pieces and fit them together again.

Malcolm X: First Plenipotentiary

No one man could carry alone Muhammad's immense bur-
den of responsibility. In directing the complex affairs of the
rapidly growing Black Nation — coordinating its program, manag-
ing its economic enterprises, founding new temples, and so on —
he relies heavily on the closely knit inner circle of Muslim leaders.
Foremost of these is his chief aide, Minister Malcolm X Shabazz,
minister of the powerful Temple No. 7 in Harlem and one of the
few ministers granted an "original" (that is, an Arabic) surname.14
One recent observer has described Malcolm as "the best thing
that ever happened to Muhammad."15

Malcolm is an indefatigable organizer and speaker. Whereas
Muhammad speaks almost exclusively to the black masses, Mal-
colm frequently appears at colleges and universities, and he is a
popular radio and television discussant. He also visits temples in
every part of the country with the regular frequency of a salesman.
He organizes new temples, pumps spirit and encouragement into
the missions or newly founded cell groups, conducts rallies and
fund-raising campaigns and serves as Muhammad's general trou-
ble-shooter and spokesman.

The New York minister is a tall, powerfully built, light-
skinned Negro. Much of his youth was spent on the streets of
Harlem as "Big Red" — a nickname he earned during a career of
petty hoodlumism, which he blandly attributes to his early training
as a Christian and to the white man's habit of making it difficult
for the so-called Negro to earn a decent living in a respectable
way.

Like Muhammad, Malcolm has had his difficulties with the
police, though for different reasons. He explains with great bitter-
ness that, since his delinquency as a youth was caused by social

190 Tensions: Inside the Movement

conditions for which the white man is responsible, the white man
should thank him for trying to change those conditions now.
While in prison, he was attracted to the daring "disclosures" in
Muhammad's teachings, became a Muslim and turned back from
his criminal career. Malcolm credits his rehabilitation entirely to
the "knowledge of self" — and its corollary, "the truth about the
white man" — as taught him by Elijah Muhammad.

All I have learned has been from the Islamic influence of Mr. Muham-
mad. ... I am what you would call an ex-convict. I am not ashamed
of this because it was all done when I was a part of the white man's
Christian world. As a Muslim, I would never have done these awful
things that caused me to go to prison.16

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska,
about 1925. He was one of eleven children and, like his acknowl-
edged master, the son of a Baptist minister. While he was very
young, the family moved to Lansing, Michigan, where the father
— Malcolm calls him "a race man" and "a little too outspoken
for Lansing" — soon incurred the hostility of the whites. When
Malcolm was only six, the family home was burned by the Ku
Klux Klan. "The firemen came and just sat there without making
any effort to put one drop of water on the fire. The same fire that
burned my father's home still burns my soul." But the worst was
yet to come. "A typical Garveytte," the father "was making his
first step toward economic independence by building his own store.
At the time we were the only Negroes in the block." His initiative
drew a swift reprisal — "my father was found with his head bashed
and his body mangled under a streetcar." Malcolm is certain that
this was a calculated murder.

The bitterness over his father's troubles with the white people
of Lansing has never left Malcolm X. On the contrary, he seems
to have nurtured and fed it, so that it now structures and orients
most of his interpersonal and professional relations. "There is no
white man a Muslim can trust." Yet, ironically, it was a white
woman whose kindness Malcolm remembers most vividly.

After his father's death, the Little family fell upon evil days.
His mother boiled dandelion greens every day to try to keep the
children from starving to death. "We stayed dizzy and weak be-
cause we stayed hungry," Malcolm recalls. What he and his

Tensions: Inside the Movement 191

brothers could pilfer augmented the wild greens his mother picked
along the roadsides. They fought desperately to remain together;
but eventually the family broke up, and Malcolm was sent to an
institution for boys. There, he recalls with a rare touch of tender-
ness, "when everybody else at that school was kicking me around,
the housemother took up for me. She was good to me, and I
followed her around like a puppy. I was a kind of mascot." Soon
it was arranged for Malcolm to attend a nearby school. He was
the only Negro at the school, and he stood first in his class often
enough to incur resentment from teachers and pupils alike.

He was asked in the eighth grade what he wanted to become. He
preferred law but was told that law was not a suitable profession for
a Negro and that instead he should think of a trade such as car-
pentry.17

"This," said Malcolm, "was the turning point in my thinking."
Eventually he left the school and moved East to what be-
came a life of juvenile delinquency. "By his late teens, Malcolm
was operating successfully on the fringes of the Harlem under-
world."18

Admitted to the underworld's fringes, sixteen-year-old Malcolm
absorbed all he heard and saw. He swiftly built up a reputation for
honesty by turning over every dollar due his boss ("I have always
been intensely loyal"). By the age of 18, Malcolm was versatile
"Big Red." He hired from four to six men variously plying dope,
numbers, bootleg whiskey and diverse forms of hustling. Malcolm
personally squired well-heeled white thrill-seekers to Harlem sin dens,
and Negroes to white sin downtown. "My best customers were
preachers and social leaders, police and all kinds of big shots in the
business of controlling other people's lives."19

Malcolm sometimes earned as much as $2,000 a month. He "paid
off the law from a $1,000 roll from the pockets of his $200 suits."
But eventually a less susceptible "law" caught up with him, and
"Big Red" went to prison — not once, but several times.

In 1947, while in the maximum-security prison at Concord,
Massachusetts, Malcolm was converted by one of his brothers who
had become a member of the Detroit Temple. Since then, the
Movement has claimed all his energies and all his loyalties. His
personal loyalty to Muhammad, in particular, seems to be un-

192 Tensions: Inside the Movement

shakable, despite his own popularity with Muslims across the
country and abroad. In 1959, for example, he visited several of
the Moslem states in the Middle East as Muhammad's emissary.
He was the guest of minor officials of several governments, but
refused the invitations of those of higher rank on the grounds that
such honors should be reserved for Muhammad himself. On the
other hand, Malcolm's impatience with some of the older minis-
ters' "softness" towards the white man is seldom disguised.

Malcolm X is undeniably brilliant. His formal schooling
ended at the eighth grade, but experience has taught him since
then. He has more than held his own, in numerous radio and
television appearances, against men with far better formal educa-
tions. In the Massachusetts prison, the minister's son read "thou-
sands of books because I wanted to know what made people the
way they are." He is clearly superior to Muhammad in intellect,
yet he credits Muhammad with "everything I know that's worth-
while." Whether he is addressing the masses on a Harlem street
corner, the Muslim faithful gathered in any one of the Messenger's
scattered temples or a university seminar, his important statements
are inevitably prefaced with "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad
teaches us. . . ." And there is pride and confidence in his voice.

The onetime hoodlum considers himself "completely re-
formed, for knowing the truth, I don't need the crutches I used to
think I had to have. When I was in the world of the Christians,
I behaved as they did; I did what the white man did because, like
everybody else, I thought this was the best thing possible to do."
His popularity in Harlem is such that in recent months he has
been mentioned as a possible candidate for Adam Clayton Powell's
seat in the United States Congress. To this suggestion Malcolm
replies: "Why should I oppose Powell? He is a Black Man.
There are plenty of devils up there whose seats we could use."

Near the Center

So far as is known, the Muslims do not have a rigid hier-
archical structure of administration. Muhammad is the "Messen-
ger" by reason of having caught the mantle from Fard, founder
of the Movement. But apart from Muhammad, no one has an

Tensions: Inside the Movement 193

inherent claim to any office. Malcolm serves as Muhammad's
aide at the Messenger's pleasure; by the same token, Muhammad
could summarily banish him to outer darkness. Presumably the
same is true of Raymond Sharrieff, who is Muhammad's son-in-
law and the Supreme Captain of the secret paramilitary organiza-
tion, the Fruit of Islam. Sharrieff has long been a Muslim, but he
is hardly known outside of the organization. Even the Muslims
know little about him except that he is Muhammad's chief aide in
managing the sect's commercial enterprises and overseeing the
FOI. Some police authorities suggest that Sharrieff also collects
tithes from delinquent members and, through a hand-picked corps
of lieutenants, effectively silences any defectors from the Move-
ment who may wish to cooperate with the police in exposing its
secrets. The Muslims say only that Sharrieff "sees that the wishes
of the Messenger are carried out."

Also near the power center of the Movement is Minister
Louis X of the Boston Temple No. 11. He is closely associated
with Malcolm X, having come into the Movement through Mal-
colm's New York Temple No. 7. Louis has produced and starred
in his play Orgena in several of the major cities where the Muslims
have temples; and in recent times he has appeared with Malcolm
X as a principal speaker, on the same program with the Messenger
himself. Like nearly all Muslim ministers, Louis seems indefat-
igable. On one occasion he returned home from a speaking en-
gagement in New York to find that one of his five children was
seriously ill. He took the child to the hospital and returned at
once to his work. Asked how he could concentrate on his tasks
without apparent concern, he explained, "Mr. Muhammad teaches
us not to grieve over what we can do nothing about. I have prayed
to Allah. If Allah takes my son, it is because Allah is wiser than I
and he knows better than I whether he should continue to live.
But whether or not my son lives, the Messenger's work must still
be done." Louis (a former Episcopalian) and his wife (an ex-
Catholic) have been Muslims for six years. He is in his late
twenties, and his Boston temple is one of the fastest growing in
the organization.

Of Muhammad's six sons, five are now close to the adminis-
trative center (though not necessarily to the power center) of the

194 Tensions: Inside the Movement

Movement. Wallace D. Muhammad travels extensively in the
interest of the Movement. Herbert is its public relations director,
and Akbar is secretary of Temple No. 2. Elijah, Jr., is second in
command of the FOI. Wallace D. is the minister of the Philadel-
phia temple; in 1960 he was sentenced to serve three years in
prison for refusing to bear arms in the service of the United
States, but was freed pending appeal.

Others near the center of the Movement are ministers Lucius
X of Washington, D. C.; Isaiah Karriem of Baltimore; and one of
Muhammad's brothers, Wilfred X, of the Detroit Temple No. 1.
(Another of the Big X's brothers, Philbert X, is minister of the
temple in Lansing, Michigan.)

Lucius X was previously an elder in the Seventh Day Ad-
ventist Church and had the oversight of several churches of that
denomination in the Chicago area. He went to Muhammad's
temple to challenge the Muslim teachings and stayed on to be-
come a member of the Black Nation of Islam. His experience in
the Christian ministry undoubtedly makes him one of the better
prepared leaders in the Movement. From Chicago, Lucius was
sent to the strategic Temple No. 4 in Washington, where he re-
cently built a $100,000 temple — the first new-from-the-ground-up
mosque in the Movement. (All other temples meet in older
buildings, such as churches and halls, which have been converted
into mosques.) Lucius' neighbor, Isaiah Karriem, is now building
a $60,000 community center adjoining his Baltimore temple "to
get black children off the street."

Perhaps the most important woman in the sect is Lottie X
of Chicago, who, as head of the Muslim Girls Training Class
(MGT), is the counterpart of Raymond Sharrieff. Sisters Thelma
X and Tynetta X write for various Muslim publications.

Trouble on the Horizon

Elijah Muhammad is a hale, energetic and mentally vigorous
man, capable of sustaining a grueling workday under very nearly
spartan self-discipline. He celebrated his sixty-third birthday in
1960 and seems likely to remain in firm control of his Black
Nation for many years to come. While he does so, any aspirant

Tensions: Inside the Movement 195

to power within the Movement must be immensely cautious and
far-sighted, for rivalry — or even open disagreement — with the
Messenger is not tolerated.

Muhammad does not proclaim himself divine, but he is
invested with quasi-divinity as one who knew Allah (W. D. Fard)
and has carried Allah's revelation down the years and across the
continent. Muhammad's people know well that he has raised them
from a small cult, nearly shattered by police harrassment and
factional in-fighting, to a powerful force in America's social and
political economy. Their unquestioning devotion to Muhammad
is further intensified by the unique emotional cathexis of the true
believer. And Muhammad himself does not discourage this triple
flow of gratitude and adoration. In the early years after Fard's
death, he asserted his claim as the sole Messenger of Allah, in
whom the Movement must thenceforth be concentered. There
is no evidence that he has ever seen reason to abate that claim.

Yet flesh is mortal; and even to the Messenger of Allah,
death must one day come. So far as is known, Muhammad has
not yet named his successor, and we may assume that a struggle
for that honor is already under way. The two leading contenders
would logically be Malcolm X and Raymond Sharrieff (though one
of Muhammad's sons, Wallace D., is also mentioned as a possible
heir-apparent). Malcolm is Muhammad's chief lieutenant in the
open affairs of the Movement and his emissary to the Islamic
nations of Africa and Asia. He is its most articulate spokesman
and its most indefatigable organizer, infused with the Messenger's
authority and admired by the ministers and the laity alike. Ray-
mond, on the other hand, is Muhammad's son-in-law and his chief
lieutenant in the secret affairs of the Movement, manager of its
business enterprises and Supreme Captain of the secret army, the
Fruit of Islam. Malcolm is undeniably the more popular con-
tender: he would certainly win a resounding mandate in an elec-
tion by the Muslim faithful. But Muslim affairs are not settled by
elections.

At the moment, few observers doubt that Malcolm X will be
Muhammad's successor and that he will bring quick intelligence
and vision to the post. For Malcolm, the Movement has not yet
begun to Realize its potential, either as a local movement or as a

196 Tensions: Inside the Movement

unit of international Islam. Under his leadership, it would
doubtless continue to expand its membership base, and it would
probably soon adopt many of the ritualistic requirements of
orthodox Islam, so that it might be officially and universally
recognized as Moslem. But Malcolm has never seen Allah; like
Rozier before him, his revelation is second-hand. Even if he
accedes smoothly to the throne — even if he is chosen for that
honor by Muhammad himself — he will not be considered quasi-
divine, and he will not reign unchallenged. On the day that the
Messenger "returns to Allah," the now capped volcano of rivalry
and dissension is likely to erupt.

By the time of Muhammad's death, the Black Muslim Move-
ment will presumably have increased to some hundreds of thou-
sands of members. What with active tithing and the establishment
of Muslim commercial enterprises, there will be a wealthy empire
at stake. The political force of the Movement will also be a rich
prize — not to mention the immense personal prestige and sense of
command that will be inherent in the position of leadership of so
potent and monolithic an organization.

During the intervening years, at least two large factions are
almost certain to have appeared. As the Movement gains vested
interests — real estate and commercial enterprises, as well as eco-
nomic and political weight in the Negro and white communities —
one bloc of the Muslim leadership will become increasingly con-
servative. It will urge the case for maintaining a stable status quo,
rather than risk the loss of so much that will have been so ardu-
ously gained. This bloc will very quickly realize that the Muslim
gains can be protected only while there is a fairly stable white
society in America. Racial separation — and especially an eco-
nomic or political weakening of the dominant white community —
would place severe strains on the Muslims' dependent economy
and would render meaningless their political balance of power.
This bloc will probably also tend to seek a status quo in revela-
tion, asserting that Fard's original divine knowledge has been
given its perfect and ultimate expression by his Messenger, Elijah
Muhammad.

A successful Movement, however, is certain to have attracted
more and more true believers, and a second bloc within the leader-

Tensions: Inside the Movement 197

ship will inevitably share their fiery, aggressive spirit. This second
bloc will be scornful of mere material and negotiable gains. Cling-
ing to the spirit of the original revelation and holding it capable of
continual renewal in each generation, it will demand a relentless
war on the detested status quo, with its entrenched white domina-
tion. Given sufficient time and numbers, this bloc may split fur-
ther into purists, who abide by Muhammad's injunction to shun
violence, and radicals, who demand war and victory at any cost.
To both these sub-blocs, however, the conservative position will
be equally abhorrent.

A ruler who is not considered divine. A rich prize for
anyone who succeeds in wresting the position of command away
from the incumbent. And built-in tensions that must create con-
flicting blocs, each of which will feel morally impelled to control
the course of the Movement. . . . How can there help but be bitter
and vicious struggles for power? Even the sense of a common
enemy will not rule out such struggles, as the history of the
Russian Communist movement shows all too well.

Indeed, the struggle for succession that will erupt at the
Messenger's death is already in progress. Evidence is sparse and
at times ambiguous, for the Muslims' central organizational prob-
lems are closely guarded secrets. (Even the few ex-Muslims who
can be found are very reluctant to discuss this aspect of Muslim
affairs.) But occasionally a development becomes known which
casts a penetrating light into the darkness in which these rivalries
and power-plays are wrapped. One such development, which
occurred in Atlanta within the last few years, is doubly significant.
It suggests (1) the pivotal power that Malcolm X now holds in
the ministerial organization and (2) the fact that he feels con-
strained to use that power to strengthen his own position in the
Movement as a whole.

This revealing development is the banishment from the
Atlanta Temple No. 15 of the popular Minister James and his
replacement by Jeremiah X, hand-picked for this new assignment
by Malcolm X. No one outside the Movement knows what sin
James committed to incur the displeasure of his superiors; he
simply disappeared suddenly from Atlanta, and his name became
taboo throughout the Muslim brotherhood. He was no longer even

198 Tensions: Inside the Movement

mentioned by anyone in the Movement; any reference to him was
(and still is) met with stony silence or an adroit shifting of the
conversation to some other subject. At last report, James was
living quietly in Houston, either under lengthy suspension or
actually expelled from the Black Nation.

One can speculate that James' popularity with non-Muslims
in Atlanta, and the failure of the Atlanta temple to develop as
rapidly as so large a concentration of Negroes would seem to
augur, got him into serious difficulties. Then, too, James was
possibly the best educated Muslim in the Movement until very
recent times. He was fluent in several languages, played several
musical instruments and was highly articulate. Was he a potential
challenge to Malcolm's lieutenancy? Did he spend too much time
fraternizing with Protestant clergy and the college crowd in
Atlanta? Or was he set on building a personal empire at Temple
No. 15? No one can be certain, but it is worth noticing that the
hard-driving Jeremiah, who was brought in to replace him, is his
opposite number in almost every respect. Under Jeremiah, temple
membership has increased, and he has categorically ignored all
but the most depressed elements in Atlanta's Negro community.
The temple no longer rents quarters in the heart of the Negro
business district on Auburn Avenue. Instead, it has moved into
a "walk-up" hall on the edge of the slums. James and some of
his aides had maintained living quarters in an Atlanta hotel; Jere-
miah lives in a modest apartment on the edge of a redevelopment
area, scarcely two blocks from some of the worst slums to be
found in the South.

Minister Jeremiah works hard — and he gets results. Already
he has been made organizer and overseer for the entire Southeast,
in which capacity he reports to Malcolm X. Jeremiah is also an
important anchor-man in the East Coast chain of temples. The
nerve center of the East Coast is Malcolm X's own Temple 7 in
New York. Louis X of Boston, trained and placed by Malcolm,
anchors the New England end of the line. Jeremiah, another
protege of Malcolm's, now controls Atlanta and directs the Move-
ment in Jacksonville, Miami, Birmingham, Chattanooga and the
other large cities in the Southeast. Only the temple in Washing-
ton, D. C, is headed by a potential counterforce — Lucius X,

Tensions: Inside the Movement 199

whom many of his colleagues believe to have ambitious of his
own. Could it then be accidental that Wallace D. Muhammad, one
of the Messenger's ablest sons, was sent out from Chicago to man
the nearby Philadelphia temple? It would hardly seem so!

II. THE SECRET ARMY

The Black Muslim leadership is uncompromising in its atti-
tude toward the white community. It is waging an economic and
ideological war that will not end, it insists, until the white race
has disappeared. There has as yet been no physical conflict
(except for one flare-up in a Chicago courtroom and another in
Detroit in the early 1930s, before Muhammad's command of the
Movement was consolidated), and Muhammad urges his followers
never to initiate a battle. But every Muslim is expected to fight if
attacked and to lay down his life, if necessary, for the Black
Nation. The entire Movement is, in short, a kind of reserve fight-
ing corps — a potential phalanx of Black Men ready to wage open
war against the entire white community in case of white provoca-
tion.

The nucleus of this force — its vanguard or officer cadre —
is the secret army known as the Fruit of Islam, which was estab-
lished as a protective unit in the early years of the Movement.
Beynon reported laconically in 1937:

Fear of trouble with the unbelievers, especially with the police, led
to the founding of the Fruit of Islam — a military organization for
the men who were drilled by captains in military tactics and the use
of firearms.20

Since then, the FOI has flexed its muscles and become probably
the most powerful single organization within the Movement. It
now has a "section" in every temple, and its local officers report
not to the minister but to the Supreme Captain of the FOI, Ray-
mond Sharrieff, at the Movement's headquarters in Chicago. This
virtually autonomous body is an elite group, carefully chosen,
rigorously trained, aware of its own distinction and responsibilities,
admired (and very likely feared) by the rest of the Muslim broth-
erhood. It is entrusted with top security assignments and remains
on constant alert. Most ominous of all, it shrouds its activities in

200 Tensions: Inside the Movement

nearly absolute secrecy — a tactic that has aroused the deepest
suspicions of observers as experienced and sophisticated as the
FBI.

The most significant change in the role of the Fruit of Islam,
however, has recently become known. Its functions have not only
expanded outward but have also doubled back upon the Move-
ment itself. The FOI no longer dedicates itself solely to guarding
the Black Nation against "trouble with the unbelievers, especially
with the police." It now acts also as a police force and judiciary
— or, more exactly, a constabulary and court-martial — to root out
and punish any hint of heterodoxy or any slackening of obedience
among the Muslims themselves. Whether this enforcement of
internal discipline has become the FOFs primary function, no
observer is yet able to say.

The Fruit of Islam is comprised of the best physically and
psychologically conditioned males in the Black Muslim Move-
ment, though the criteria for admission vary slightly to meet local
conditions. In some of the larger temples, only the best qualified
men under the age of thirty are admitted. In some small temples,
every male Muslim is considered eligible. (Obviously each section
is urged to reach a specified minimum size, even at a possible
sacrifice in quality.) A few temples have as many as three distinct
FOI groups: a Junior FOI for youths up to sixteen, a prime group
for men sixteen to thirty-five, and a third group for men over
thirty-five. No reliable estimate of the total membership of the
FOI is available.

The chain of command is simple and strictly maintained.
The FOI sections are divided into squads, each of which is under
the command of a lieutenant. The lieutenants of each section
report to a captain, who heads the section and reports (according
to informants) "directly to Muhammad." In practice, the captains
undoubtedly report to Muhammad's deputy in this area, the
Supreme Captain of the FOI, Raymond Sharrieff . One of Muham-
mad's sons, Elijah, Jr., is second in command and serves as captain
of the FOI section in Temple No. 2, the Chicago headquarters
temple, from which Muhammad's personal security force, or honor
guard, is drawn.

Tensions: Inside the Movement 201

As part of their tactic of respectability, the Muslim leaders
present the FOI as an ordinary physical training program, like
those of "the YMCA, CYO, Masons or Boy Scouts." Its mem-
bers do, indeed, engage in "body-building and physical hygiene"
activities. Unlike most Boy Scout troops, however, they also re-
ceive training in judo, military drill and the use of knives and
blackjacks. There is no evidence that the FOI sections still receive
small-arms training — as Beynon reported in 1937 — or that the
FOI high command is gathering an armory for emergency use.
Such activities are not unlikely, however, for the FOI looks for-
ward to playing an heroic role in the impending "Battle of Arma-
geddon."

The FOFs present-day duties fall under two broad headings,
security and discipline. As a security force, the FOI stands guard
in the temples, checks visitors at all Muslim meetings and provides
a personal guard for all ministers and traveling officials, including
the Messenger and Malcolm X. As a disciplinary force, it super-
vises the "trials" of Muslims charged with such offenses as adul-
tery, the use of narcotics, misuse of temple funds, not attending
meetings, sleeping during meetings, failing to bring "Lost-Pounds"
(visitors) to meetings, reporting temple activities to outsiders,
using unbecoming language before female Muslims, eating or sell-
ing pork, failing to pay extra dues for being overweight, allowing
anyone to enter the temple under the influence of liquor or stating
an unwillingness to die for Allah.

At the "trial," the offending Muslim is placed in the custody
of the temple's FOI. The proceedings are conducted jointly by the
FOI captain and the minister, with the entire FOI section in
attendance. (In the case of lesser infractions, all regular members
of the temple may be admitted.) The defendent is not allowed to
offer any defense: the charges against him are read, and the ver-
dict is thereupon pronounced — by the minister in case a religious
issue is involved, by the FOI captain in all other cases. This
verdict is final; there is no appeal.

At least three types of sentence are known to be imposed as
the result of these FOI trials. For minor violations there is a
"Class C" sentence, under which the convicted Muslim is required

202 Tensions: Inside the Movement

to perform labor at the temple or some other designated place for
a period of time. A more serious but not infrequent punishment
is the "Class F" sentence, or suspension, under which the convict
is isolated from all Muslim contacts for a period of time ranging
from ninety days to five years. During this time he is barred from
all Muslim temples, enterprises and businesses; and other Muslims
are forbidden to talk with, visit or otherwise associate with him.
The most serious sentence — and it is apparently rarely invoked —
is formal and permanent expulsion from the Movement.

Recruits to the FOI are carefully screened before admission,
for they are expected to set the highest possible standards of
character and dedication. Each candidate is required to pass oral
examinations on certain levels of "knowledge" about the Move-
ment and its history — examinations in which the candidate must
recite long memorized passages verbatim, without a single error.
Candidates are also required to take a secret oath on admission.

From that point on, the men and officers are held rigorously
to the most demanding Muslim ideals, for the Fruit of Islam are
considered the living exemplars of the Black Nation. They must
be "absolutely independent in every respect" — a grandiose phrase
which actually means only that they must be self-reliant and able
to protect themselves against any form of attack. They must be
perfectly obedient to all constituted authority, black or white, and
they must promote complete unity and harmony within the group.
They must respect and protect black womanhood; there can be no
deviation, for the "era of disgrace" for the black woman has come
to an end, "even if it costs her life and the lives of her defenders."
They must reassume the position of leadership and guidance in
their own homes. And they must examine and question everything
they see and hear, accepting nothing as sacred or certain except on
its intrinsic merits — another Muslim ideal that in practice means
somewhat less than it says.

As a result of its power and secrecy, its high standards and
strict discipline, the FOI has drawn about itself an especially
glamorous aura. Its military aspect appeals directly to the pent-up
militancy of the true believer; and many Muslims who may not
join the FOI act out their militancy by adulating it. To these true

Tensions: Inside the Movement 203

believers, the FOI is the vanguard of Muslim destiny, the glorious
army of the Black Man's revolution that is now gathering its
strength. But the FOI also has a certain mystical status. "Fruit,"
the Muslims explain, is the "final product of any tree"; it is the
purpose for which the tree exists. Yet in the fruit is the seed: the
beginning of a new tree. The Black Muslims see themselves as
the fruit of the American system of slavery and oppression, bear-
ing within themselves the seed of the coming Black Nation. The
Fruit of Islam, therefore, symbolizes the inner meaning of the
Movement as a whole.

Yet the structure and role of the FOI — indeed, its very
existence — suggest that it may soon become the focus of profound
tensions inside the Movement. For example, when a struggle for
succession breaks out at Muhammad's death, as it inevitably must,
to whom will the FOI throw its support? And if the FOI is recog-
nized as a key weapon in that struggle, will there not be increas-
ingly tense intrigues among the leadership for control of the secret
army? Surely it is no accident that Muhammad has appointed, as
the two chief officers of the FOI, his son-in-law and his son.

Again, the FOI trials reveal clearly that discipline in the
Muslim ranks is less than perfect. The Muslim leadership has
chosen to notice even minor infractions and to punish them
through the FOI. But if "loyalty" and "obedience" are so nar-
rowly defined, they cannot be maintained; and if the inevitable
infractions are punished highhandedly, the Muslims' spontaneous
loyalty and obedience to the Movement must eventually give way
to resentment and rebellion. In that case, the FOI might easily
degenerate into a strong-arm elite keeping a restive people in line.
Such a development would mean trouble not only within the
Movement but also between the Muslims and the white commu-
nity.

Above all, there is the curious paradox that a divine Black
Nation, outraged by the injustices of a class-structured white
society, has now deliberately created an elite of its own. How will
the mass of Muslims react as they come to realize that, after all
the bright promises, they are second-class citizens again, even in
the Black Nation of Islam?

204 Tensions: Inside the Movement

IH. THE SEARCH FOR RESPECTABILITY

Violence and the Christian Tradition

The private image of the Movement has changed consider-
ably since the days of Wallace Fard, and it continues to be modi-
fied as the Muslims search for respectability and acceptance.

The Detroit Muslims of the 1930s had a number of bizarre
excesses charged against them, including, as we have seen, human
sacrifice.

On November 21, 1932, the people of Detroit became conscious of
the presence of the cult through its first widely publicized human sac-
rifice. A prominent member, Robert Harris, renamed Robert Karriem,
erected an altar in his home at 1249 Dubois Street and invited his
roomer, John J. Smith, to present himself as a human sacrifice, so that
he might become, as Harris said, "the Savior of the World." Smith
agreed, and at the hour appointed for the sacrifice — 9:30 a.m. — Harris
plunged a knife into Smith's heart.21

Other reports of sacrifices or attempted sacrifices were current in
Detroit as late as 1937.

In Chicago in 1935, two hundred Muslims rioted in a court-
room and attempted to storm the bench while one of their mem-
bers was on trial. Before the melee was over, one policeman was
dead and eleven had been injured. Two of the Muslims were shot
in the clash, and forty were sent to prison.22 As recently as 1958,
Muhammad made a special trip to Detroit to quiet his followers,
who were having trouble with the police.23

In 1960, in a case involving Muslims in New York City, the
presiding judge cleared the courtroom before the jury's verdict
was read, fearing that "the Muslim followers who packed the hall
every day of the seven-day trial might demonstrate if a verdict of
guilty were issued."24 The Muslim defendants had been charged
with assaulting two policemen who entered their homes without a
warrant; they were found not guilty, and the anticipated trouble
did not develop. The Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch reported, how-
ever, that fifty Muslims, "led by Minister Malcolm X, silently
patrolled the corridor of the court building while the jury carried
on its deliberations" and that "outside the court building in a

Tensions: Inside the Movement 205

small park across the street, some 400 male followers of the Mus-
lim faith were gathered. They were silent, well-disciplined, omi-
nous." Malcolm X was described as "a disturbingly intent figure
as he sat on a corridor bench munching dried raisins . . . ponder-
ing the explosive factors largely in his command."25

Such incidents are isolated, however, for Muhammad pre-
fers to disassociate his Movement from violent activity of any
kind. His followers are forbidden to carry weapons, and they are
cautioned not to carry any instrument that might conceivably be
considered even a potential weapon, should they be searched by
an over zealous police officer. But the Muslim leader is caught
on the horns of a dilemma, for he has taught his followers not
only to avoid precipitating violence but also to defend themselves
and each other if they are assaulted.

We must take things into our own hands. We must return to the
Mosaic law of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. What does
it matter if 10 million of us die? There will be 7 million of us left,
and they will enjoy justice and freedom.20

The constant threat of violence is implicit in the basic doctrines
of the Movement, and this fearlessness before the white man is
one of the Movement's strongest appeals.

Much is made of the "Battle of Armageddon" that is ex-
pected to take place in North America. But this battle — until
recently a prominent feature in Muslim literature and teachings —
is carefully relegated to the realm of the eschatological, where
such battles usually are fought. It belongs to a future in which
the present believers are not likely to participate. Unanticipated
violence, on the other hand, may occur at any moment. The
Muslims display a kind of contained aggressiveness, which may
occasionally provoke violence without actually initiating it.

Muhammad does not wish to alter the self-image of the
Muslims as "men among men." Yet he does wish his followers to
be accepted as peaceful, law-abiding, religious individuals. There
may be no logical inconsistency here, but there are serious emo-
tional obstacles which prevent the Negro community at large from
accepting him and his Movement on the terms of his stated pro-
posals. First of all, American Negroes have known no religion
other than Christianity, and the Christian faith — with its emphasis

206 Tensions: Inside the Movement

on charity and long-suffering — has perhaps been more meaningful
to them than to many who have not been the victims of social
rejection. Consequently, any new religion not strongly interlaced
with at least lip-service to the Christian traditions of meekness
and love may expect to find the Negro masses generally unre-
ceptive.

Again, Muhammad's peculiar brand of Islam at once
snatches away the comforts of heaven, which have been earned
at so great a price on earth, and substitutes a Supreme Black Man
for the sure and comforting presence of an omnipotent Father.
Those educated in the Christian spirit believe that patience and
loving-kindness on earth will earn the sweetest of all rewards:
eternal life in a kingdom where all men love their brothers and
live as equals in the nearness of God. In exchange for this gentle
faith, the Muslims offer the Negro Christian only the taste of
violence — the chance to vent his most acrid hostilities here on
earth and then to die forever. This exchange is not generally
palatable to even the most humiliated and resentful Negro Chris-
tians.

In an attempt to bridge the gap, Muhammad has recently
modified and hushed some of the Movement's most strident as-
saults on Christianity itself. The "debunking" of the virgin birth
of Jesus, for example, was a standard dramatic feature of every
temple lecture a few years ago. Today it is seldom mentioned
unless the issue is raised by a non-Muslim. The Muslim denuncia-
tion of the Bible as a "poison book" has been radically reinter-
preted. The Bible, the ministers now say, is both true and accurate
when "correctly interpreted." It was "poisoned" by the white
man, who wished to use it to justify his wicked behavior. Finally,
Negroes are cordially invited to attend lectures — and even for-
mally to join the Movement — while remaining active members of
the Christian church.

The Muslims have thus softened their derision of Christian
symbols but not their contempt for the Christian faith. They are
clearly gambling that the symbols have become empty of meaning,
that the Negro clings to them only because they are familiar and
comfortable and a badge of religious respectability. The Muslims
are willing to let the Negro cherish these meaningless symbols, at

Tensions: Inside the Movement 207

least for a while, if he will become a Black Muslim at heart. And
many recent developments in the Negro Christian community
seem to be nurturing this prospect. The earthly rewards of meek-
ness and a gentle faith are slow in coming, perhaps too slow for
the prevailing mood of urgency. Negro Christians, like white ones,
are rapidly learning to modify their faith wherever secular advan-
tage is at stake. Even among the devoted cadres of the new non-
violence movement, Christian love may at times become a tech-
nique rather than a way of life.

A new aggressive spirit is undeniably taking possession of
America's Negro youth. But the Muslims have erred badly in
mistaking this aggressive spirit for a spirit of aggression. Starting
from his present ground of oppression and enforced humility, the
Negro can go a long, long way toward asserting himself without
crossing the border into violence. There are inescapable signs
that the Negro is abandoning Christian love as an effective agent
of social change. But his purpose is still to enlighten the white
man, not to annihilate him. Moreover, the goal of this new aggres-
sive spirit is flatly opposed to Muslim separatism. Negro youth do
not want a Black Nation. They want their fair share of what this
society has to offer, and they are convinced that it can be had
without a resort to violence.

The young Negroes who are now flocking to the Black
Muslims are dissidents who know only how to hate because they
have been surrounded by the symbols of hatred all their lives long.
They are of serious concern to our society, which has created
them, but they are far from representing a sizable portion of the
Negro community as a whole.

The open bid for respectability which has tended to charac-
terize the Black Muslim Movement in recent years is largely trace-
able to Malcolm X, and it is he who may be hung on the horns of
the dilemma. In order to broaden the scope of the Movement, to
facilitate its appeal to the entire Negro community, he has been
willing to make a superficial peace with the conservative Negro
leadership and to make room in the Muslim mythology and serv-
ices for Christian symbols. But to achieve the respectability he
desires, he must compromise still further. Until the Muslims at
least talk in terms of peace and love, they will generally be con-

208 Tensions: Inside the Movement

sidered unrespectable, and a firm ceiling will remain on the Move-
ment's potential for growth. If he leads the Muslims down this
path, however, he will weaken — perhaps irreparably — the dynamic
of hatred which is the Movement's vital force.

In the long run, therefore, Malcolm must abandon either the
purity of Muslim dogma or his dream of respectability and massive
expansion. He must either remain a Muslim in the tradition of
Muhammad or become, in the eyes of his followers, just another
of the "Uncle Toms" he has so long denounced.

The Race Issue

The Black Muslim leadership's search for respectability — a
concomitant of its desire for rapid growth — may also force an
internal showdown on the vehemence and bitterness with which
the race issue is to be pressed. At the moment, Muhammad still
openly denounces the white man — the entire white race, without
exception — in the most scathing language ever heard in the white-
dominated nations of the world. These denunciations attract and
delight the true believer, but they repel most Negroes, who them-
selves are daily victims of extreme and irrational racial generaliza-
tions. The average Negro feels that anyone who publicly partici-
pates in the categorical denunciation of any race must be either
insane or a troublemaker or both.

Yet Muhammad is aware of the paradox that the less respec-
table he is, the more he is respected. His boldness in "saying for
millions what millions fear to say for themselves" may elevate
him to a recognized position of leadership in the Negro commu-
nity. Even more important, he feels, it may earn him the respect
of the white man, who admires solidarity and determination. And
the respect of the white man is the key to respectability among
American Negroes, for "whom the white man respects, the Negro
hastens to embrace." Thus, ironically, Muhammad may win by
demagogy a seal of approval that he could never win by modera-
tion.

In playing this gamble, Muhammad risks incurring the fate
that befell Marcus Garvey: tagged as a hate-monger, Garvey
could not consolidate the Negro masses under his standard and

Tensions: Inside the Movement 209

so was easily toppled by a combined action of white and Negro
leaders. Perhaps for this reason, Muhammad is especially dis-
tressed by charges that he is hate-mongering. He asserts that hate
would be morally justified, for "the white man has hated the
Negroes . . . ever since they have been on this planet earth,"27 and
that hate is given divine approval in the Christians' own Bible:

God, Himself, hates: see Malachi 1:2-3: "Was not Esau Jacob's
brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob and I hated Esau. . . ."
St. Luke 14:26, no man could be the disciple of Jesus unless he hated
his father, mother, wife, children. . . ,28

Yet his own racial teachings, he insists, are not hate but the simple
truth.

I am here with the truth for you to accept or be the losers. I am
not afraid to speak the truth regardless. . . . Let those who accuse me
of teaching hate point out that portion of my teaching which consti-
tutes hate. . . . Is it hate to call upon you to unite?29

Muhammad presents himself as a man who is dispassionately
revealing the truth about an enemy — an absolutely ruthless enemy,
who has skillfully camouflaged his character by distorting the facts
of history and intimidating all who are unwilling to accept the
distortion. The Messenger claims to preach not hate but simply
"the truth which is capable of setting the Black Man free."

If this gamble pays off, Muhammad may gain respectability
for his Movement without retreating an inch on the race issue and
without internal dissensions. If it fails, the result may be a tug-of-
war between those who cling to respectability and those who cling
to hatred. In either case, the Messenger has made his own position
clear: "I will never, after having knowledge, love nor befriend the
enemies of ... my Black Nation, whether my people believe as I
do or not."80

8 The Black Muslims and
Orthodox Islam

A major goal of the present Muslim leadership is to achieve
general acceptance of the Movement as a legitimate religion —
specifically, as a legitimate sect of orthodox Islam. This is not an
internal necessity: the Muslims' self-respect does not hinge on such
acceptance. Muhammad has stated that the Muslims are legitimate
and Islamic, and so far as the Muslims themselves are concerned,
this settles the matter. Nor is it an expedient directed at the Negro
community, for the aegis of orthodox Islam means nothing in
America's black ghettos. So long as the Movement keeps its color
identity with the rising "black" peoples of Africa and Asia, it
could discard all its Islamic attributes — its name, its prayers to
Allah, its citations from the Quran, everything — without risking
in the smallest degree its appeal to the black masses.

In pressing their demand for complete acceptance as a legiti-
mate religion and a Moslem sect, the Muslims have their eye
primarily on the white community. In many ways, America does
live up to its surpassing democratic ideal, pre-eminently in the
elaborate safeguards it provides for freedom of worship. Religious
groups in America are unfettered; only in the most extreme cases
is certain quasi-secular behavior in the name of religion construed
as against public policy and, as such, prohibited.1 The Black
Muslims know well that, as they prosper, they will encounter in
the white community a pressure for the most stringent repressions
and reprisals. The more swiftly and securely they can become
acknowledged as a legitimate religion, the more securely they can
rely upon the counterpressures of democratic toleration and con-
stitutional immunity.

The Muslims have generally been given the benefit of the
doubt thus far. They have been treated, if only provisionally, as a
legitimate religion. Except in prisons, their meetings have never

210

The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 211

been barred by any agency of the government. The Universities of
Islam are legally approved as parochial schools. And the temples
and school properties are tax-exempt in all states where they exist,
under the same regulations that govern the church properties of
all other religious bodies.

Even this provisional acceptance, however, is far from com-
plete. The FBI, for example, keeps the Movement under as close
surveillance as it would a political terrorist organization. And in
some instances, the Muslims' status as a religion has been flatly
denied by government officials. Perhaps the most significant of
these denials to date have occurred in prisons, which are among
the Muslims' most fertile recruiting grounds. In some prisons, the
Muslims are permitted to hold services, but in others they are
denied the right of assembly. A case in point is Clinton State
Prison at Utica, New York, where four Negro inmates were
allegedly placed in solitary confinement when they sought to
practice their new faith. (The warden described three of the
prisoners as "Protestants a year ago"; the fourth had been a
Catholic.) Prison officials did not dispute that discipline improves
markedly among those converted to Islam, but they protested that
the Muslims have "ulterior motives," aimed at "forcing supremacy
over whites, although they do not express it."2

To defend themselves against such harassments, now and
in the future, the Muslims are pressing hard for complete recogni-
tion as a legitimate religion, on equal terms with the reigning
triumvirate of Protestants, Catholics and Jews. At Utica, for
example, a suit was entered on behalf of the four converts, and a
federal court judge granted service of a summons on the prison
warden as defendant.

Muhammad's insistence on his Movement's Islamic identity
has much the same immediate purpose. Complete acceptance as
a legitimate religion would give the Muslims a degree of security
but, in view of the antagonism they will arouse, perhaps not
enough. As a mere private cult, they would still be vulnerable to
unofficial but damaging molestation. If they can entrench them-
selves as a Moslem sect, however, they will be very nearly immune
to overt white hostility, for the international political implications
of the suppression or harassment of Moslems in the United States

212 The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam

would be extremely grave. Muhammad craves this immunity and
the resultant freedom of maneuver, and except for his crucial
doctrine — denunciation of the white race "and all that race goes
for" — he seems ready to moderate his program to achieve this end.
At the moment, orthodox Islamic groups in the United
States do not acknowledge the Black Muslims as in any way
related to world-wide Islam. The response from Arab and other
Moslem nations is more ambiguous. There seems good reason to
believe that the Black Muslims will soon be officially sheltered in
the community of international Islam.

A Legitimate Religion?

The line that separates a purely social organization from a
purely religious communion is seldom well defined. Religion is, in
part, a facet of man's social life; and social concerns are at times
invested with an almost religious aura. Some great religious
movements developed originally out of social concerns (Method-
ism is a well-known example), and social movements ranging
from communism to the Townsend Plan have exhibited marked
religious overtones.3 An incipient mass movement such as the
Black Muslims, therefore, may be both "social" and "religious,"
though its emphasis will be weighted in one direction or the other.

America has always been wary of definitions which claim to
draw a precise line between the religious and the secular. Such
definitions tend to be either too nebulous or too subjective; in
either case, they are unreliable guides for a democracy intent on
safeguarding an absolute freedom of worship. The American
public, as a result, eschews all rigid criteria of orthodoxy and
maintains an historically unique tolerance of religious deviation.
Americans may reject and even combat an organization which
claims to be a religion, but they are not likely to deny that it is a
religion.

Within the American tradition, then, it is not necessary for
the Black Muslims to prove that they are a valid religious com-
munion. The question is whether it can be proved that they are
not. If the negative cannot be proved, a general acceptance of the
Movement as a legitimate religion is assured.

The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 213

Emile Durkheim, one of the most critical observers and
students of the sociology of religion, insists that any attempt at a
definition of religion must derive from the existential phenomenon,
from "the reality itself . . . for religion cannot be defined except
by the characteristics which are found wherever religion itself is
found."4 At an irreducible minimum, he suggests, these charac-
teristics are beliefs and rites.

Religious phenomena are naturally arranged in two fundamental
categories: beliefs and rites. The first are states of opinion, and con-
sist in representations; the second are determined modes of action.5

A religious rite is distinguished from its secular counterpart by the
sacred nature of its object. A moral rule or a legal statute, for
example, may prescribe behavior identical to that of a religious
rite; but the religious prescription refers to a different class of
objects. The religious object is "sacred"; the secular object, even
when of the highest social value, is "profane." There is no neces-
sary relationship, however, between the sacred and either "deity"
or the "supernatural." Neither the divine nor the supernatural is
necessary to a religion.

The circle of sacred objects cannot be determined . . . once for all.
Its extent varies infinitely, according to the different religions. That
is how Buddhism is a religion: in default of gods, it admits the
existence of sacred things, namely, the four noble truths and the
practices derived from them.6

Indeed, the "circle of sacred objects" cannot be rationally defined
at all. That is sacred which the believers of a particular faith feel
is sacred. And this feeling is at once the most subjective and most
widespread, the most familiar and most elusive of phenomena. It
evades definition, yet its presence is the identifying mark of a
legitimate religion. In pragmatic terms, wherever a body of men
shares the feeling that a specific group of objects is sacred and
has elaborated this feeling into specific beliefs and rites, there a
religion must be said to exist.

It must be granted, then, that the Black Muslim Movement
constitutes a legitimate religion within the definition of the soci-
ology of religion.7 But there are many kinds of religion; and while
all enjoy a nearly unrestricted freedom of worship in America,

214 The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam

they are not all granted equal deference and respect by the com-
munity at large. Mere cults, for example, like the followers of
Father Divine and "Daddy Grace," are not taken as seriously as
Presbyterians, say, or as Jews. But the Black Muslims want and
are determined to achieve the respect of all Americans, even of
the doomed "blue-eyed devils." Their success will depend, in large
part, on the kind of religion they are — that is, on the degree of
religious stability and respectability they can be said to have
achieved.

Perhaps the best known analysis of religious groups into
broad categories is that developed by Ernst Troeltsch and refined
by J. Milton Yinger. This system of categories, like all others
familiar to Americans, is based on Christian groups, and there is
no real assurance that it is valid when applied to non-Christian
religions such as the Black Muslims. It is, nevertheless, the system
by which the Muslims will be evaluated by most Americans; it is
the scale against which the Muslims will actually be measured in
their demand for deference and respect.

Troeltsch divides religious groups into two types: the church
and the sect. The leader of a church is characteristically a "priest";
the leader of a sect is characteristically a "prophet." In broader
terms:

The Church is that type of organization which is overwhelmingly
conservative, which to a certain extent accepts the secular order, and
dominates the masses; in principle, therefore, it is universal; i.e., it
desires to cover the whole life of humanity. The sects, on the other
hand, are comparatively small groups; they aspire after personal
inward perfection, and they aim at a direct personal fellowship
between the members of each group. . . . Their attitude towards the
world, the State, and Society may be indifferent, tolerant, or hostile
since they have no desire to control and incorporate these forms of
social life; on the contrary, they tend to avoid them; their aim is
usually either to tolerate their presence alongside of their own body,
or even to replace these social institutions by their own society.8

The church, in short, attempts to include the whole society
in its outlook and thus inevitably becomes an integral part of the
social order. It may even become a determining force, providing
stability and sanction; but to the same extent it becomes a captive
of the upper classes and dependent on them. The church may

The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 215

thus defeat its own ends, for as the lower classes find themselves
abandoned, schisms will occur, and the social order will again be
threatened. New religious groups, or sects, will then coalesce in
response to various middle- and lower-class needs not met by the
church — needs which center at times on theological or ritual disa-
greements but more often on questions of economic or political
enfranchisement, racial or ethnic status, social mobility or social
change. The church, to the extent that it is a balance wheel of the
status quo, is impotent to cope with such revolutionary tensions.

The sect, by contrast, draws primarily upon the disinherited,
the unchampioned and those opposed to the existing social order.
It repudiates the compromises the church has made with secular
institutions, and it resents the church's failure to assert itself
against social abuses. The sect may respond to worldly evil by
withdrawing from society, hoping to avoid present injustice and
ultimate perdition, or by embracing a radicalism intended to estab-
lish in the social order its own ideals and sense of justice.

Not all sects (as Yinger points out) originate in the lower
classes. The Methodist movement, for example, "remained
throughout its history in the control of men who had been born
and bred in the middle class,"9 although it was substantially a
lower-class movement until recent times. The Bahais, Christian
Scientists, Theosophists and numerous other familiar sects have
been predominantly middle-class from their inception. Middle-
class sects are not characteristically in protest against the social
order, for they have usually been favored by it. They are more
often disenchanted with the institutionalized churches, which seem
to them to be neglecting essential human values.

Lower-class sects, on the other hand, are most often spawned
in poverty, disprivilege, depression and despair. They are the
refuge of those who are without power and who lack even an
effective advocate in the circles where power resides. The existing
society has been unjust to them, so they will reorganize the social
order — usually along lines that those in power construe as "radi-
cal." But sects of this type tend to elicit concerted opposition and
are thus predisposed to failure. They incur the hostility not only
of the power elite but also of the less radical sects, which are
potentially more mobile and which stand to suffer if the power

216 The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam

structure, feeling threatened, becomes more rigidly exclusive. The
usual history of a radical sect is therefore short.

The Black Muslim Movement is clearly a sect, in Troeltsch's
broad definition of that term. Appealing to an almost exclusively
Christian Negro community, the Movement repudiates the Chris-
tian church not only in particulars but in toto. It insists upon the
separation of Black Men from white society, leaving that corrupt
edifice to crumble under the weight of its own iniquity. And
where the Movement is forced into contact with the white com-
munity, it reacts with a radicalism which is — from the Muslim
point of view, at least — idealistic and just. But to categorize the
Muslims as a sect is not quite so simple as Troeltsch's terms
suggest, for Yinger's modification introduces a new element that
must be carefully reckoned with.

As part of his refinement of Troeltsch's categories,10 Yinger
points to the existence of a third type of religious group which,
while it somewhat resembles the sect, is in fact quite dissimilar.
This type is the cult, a small group of people unrelated to any
other religious institution and "tied together only by common
religious emotions and needs."11 Yinger seems to consider the
Black Muslims a cult, pure and simple:

Pure cult types are not common in Western society; most groups that
might be called cults are fairly close to the sect type. Perhaps the
best examples are the various Spiritualist groups and some of the
"Moslem" cults among American Negroes.12

The cult, as Yinger defines it, is characteristically organized
around a charismatic leader (such as Muhammad), in whom are
centered the loyalties of the rank and file. As a result, the cult
usually is confined to a small area and dies with its founder:
problems of succession are not effectively anticipated, and the
bereaved cult disintegrates into splinter groups, which eventually
fade into oblivion. But while it exists, the cult deviates even more
sharply than the sect from the dominant church and the estab-
lished social order, and its "implications for anarchy are even
stronger."13 It takes individual problems, especially the "search
for a mystic experience,"14 as its total concern and shows little or
no interest in problems of social justice. Cult members are typi-

The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 217

cally indifferent to their status and prospects in the enveloping
society.

On the surface, the Black Muslim Movement might seem to
merit Yinger's designation of it as a cult. It is (1) a relatively
small group of people (2) under strong charismatic leadership,
(3) deviating sharply from the established social order and (4)
diverging absolutely from the dominant church of its society. But
on close inspection, a number of significant differences appear.
(These differences were perhaps not familiar to Yinger when he
wrote in 1957, for there has been no serious published study of
the Black Muslims in almost twenty-five years.)

The Muslims originated as a small, local group, but in recent
years their membership has spiraled to at least 100,000 — some
estimates would triple that figure — with more than fifty temples in
major cities from Boston and Miami to San Diego. While still
relatively small compared to the nation's major religious bodies,
they are larger than most American denominations, sects and cults.
More than fifty Protestant denominations, for example, have fewer
than ten congregations each, and more than half the sects in the
nation have only 7,000 members or less.15

The impressive cohesion of the Black Muslim Movement
today is certainly due to the charismatic leadership of Elijah
Muhammad. True, he is not the founder of the Movement but
only the Messenger of Allah; the Muslims passed through their
first crisis of succession when, under extremely divisive conditions,
the mantle was passed down from Wallace Fard to Muhammad.
Yet the Muslims' absolute loyalty to Muhammad and their un-
critical faith in his wisdom and leadership suggest a simple con-
tinuity of charisma, which has postponed the problem of succes-
sion without really solving it. On the other hand — and perhaps of
decisive importance — the Movement is rapidly developing a firm
organizational structure. Under the direction of an aggressive
clergy and inner council, the Movement continues to expand
vigorously in all parts of the country without the immediate
charismatic presence of the Messenger.

The Muslims do deviate sharply from the established social
order, and their call for separation in some ways resembles the
withdrawal characteristic of the cult. The Muslims consider futile

218 The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam

any attempt to reform American society; they plan simply to
retire from it, cultivate the Black Nation and wait. The white
devils, lacking black victims, will then presumably turn on each
other and destroy themselves, and the Black Man will inherit the
earth. Yet the driving force of the Movement is not separatism
but hatred; and the torrent of racial condemnation which fills its
sermons and publications is undeniably social protest, all the more
so for its bitter rejection of any hope for reform. There is no
trace among the Muslims of that mystical absorption and indiffer-
ence to social injustice which mark a cult.

Finally, the Muslims are unequivocal in their repudiation of
the dominant church in American society. Their beliefs and rites
are almost totally deviant from those of the Christian tradition,
and within this frame of reference a case might be made for
labeling them a cult. But the Muslims do not claim to be a Chris-
tian sect. They have declared themselves an integral part of Islam,
which they consider the church of the Black Nation. Muslim
leaders are now working skillfully and hard to establish the Move-
ment's authenticity as a legitimate Moslem sect. If they succeed —
and it seems virtually certain that they will — the last realistic
argument that would relegate the Movement to the status of a cult
will have been answered.

The massive weight of all available evidence, in short, sug-
gests that the Black Muslim Movement is not a cult but a sect.16
It is not local, ephemeral or isolated; it will not collapse at Mu-
hammad's death, and it may soon be able to draw upon the vast
prestige and power of international Islam to defend it in case of
harassment by the white community. To shrug it off, in the
manner of some observers, as "just another cult" would be a
tragic error. The Muslims today are powerless children of despair
and poverty in revolt against a social order they have found unjust.
But they will not remain powerless, and it is likely that they will
be with us for a long time to come.

A Moslem Sect?

The Muslim dream is to have a solid Black Muslim com-
munity in the United States, recognized and supported by Moslems

The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 219

throughout the world as an integral part of Islam. This is not
sheer expediency: from the earliest days of the Movement, the
Black Muslims have considered themselves devout adherents of
the Moslem faith. They recognize Allah as the one true God
(though they see Him not as a unique deity but as the Supreme
Black Man among Black Men, all of whom are divine). They
base their services on both the Quran and the Bible, and they are
learning Arabic so as to be able to rely entirely on the original
Quran. They observe the classic Moslem prayer ritual and dietary
laws, and they hold in high esteem the traditional pilgrimage to
Mecca.

On certain fundamental points of doctrine, however, the
Black Muslims have departed widely from the orthodox Moslem
tradition. Partly for this reason, and partly from an instinctive
militancy toward newcomers, the official representatives of ortho-
dox Islam in the United States have refused any recognition of the
Black Muslims. The Movement has not been admitted as an
affiliate of the official Federation of Islamic Associations in the
United States and Canada, nor has it been recognized as legitimate
by any affiliate of the federation. It has, in fact, been vigorously
denounced by several Moslem groups, including the rival Muslim
Brotherhood of America.

Muhammad readily admits that some of the teachings and
practices of his Movement are at variance with those of other
Moslem groups, but he presents these as differences of interpreta-
tion within a unity of belief. American Negroes, he argues, have
been the victims of a harsh and cynical oppression, and the Islamic
faith in its pure orthodox form is not appropriate to their needs:

My brothers in the East were never subjected to the conditions of
slavery and systematic brainwashing by the Slavemasters for as long
a period as my people here were subjected. I cannot, therefore, blame
them if they differ with me in certain interpretations of the message of
Islam.17

He is not troubled by the rejection of the handful of orthodox
Moslems in the United States; his hopes are staked on recognition
by the more important (and more flexible) officials in the Moslem
nations of Africa and Asia.

220 The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam

Two of the Black Muslims' basic doctrines are at the heart
of the controversy: their insistence that the Black Man must sepa-
rate himself from the abhorrent and doomed white race, and their
belief that it is the manifest destiny of the Black Nation to inherit
the earth. These doctrines are in flagrant contrast to the orthodox
Moslem ideal of an all-embracing brotherhood of man. Moslems
have, throughout their history, shown a rare and admirable indif-
ference to boundaries of race; and any tinge of racial bigotry in an
acknowledged Moslem group would cause the orthodox acute
embarrassment and anguish. The Black Muslims, however, refuse
absolutely to moderate or compromise their racist doctrines.
Muhammad is convinced that a belief in pan-racial brotherhood
would leave his followers with no more dignity and hope than they
can now find in the Christian church.

Are these contradictions so extreme that the Black Muslims
must be said to have excluded themselves from Islam? The ques-
tion will have to be answered, of course, by Moslem theologians,
but it seems likely that they will find the Black Muslims to be
within the pale — a legitimate if somewhat heretical Moslem sect.
Every faith has its deviates, and every international faith makes
broad allowances for interpretations of doctrine to fit local condi-
tions. The fact that orthodox Moslems in America reject the
Movement has no real significance: most Christian sects and de-
nominations were likewise spurned by the orthodox in their found-
ing years. And a clear precedent exists in Islam itself for the
ultimate recognition of heretics as a sect despite major doctrinal
differences. This precedent is the Ahmadiyah movement, a small
Moslem group in India and Pakistan.18

The "prophet" of the movement was the pious Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
(1839-1908), . . . [who] was accepted by many, including orthodox
religious, as a great [Moslem] reformer. Suddenly, in 1889, his popu-
larity gave place to extreme denunciation, when he announced that
he had received a revelation authorizing him to receive men's allegi-
ance as the promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi; that is, Jesus returned
to earth and the apocalyptic saviour who [Moslem] tradition has held
will appear at the last day. The general [Moslem] community, and
particularly the divines, outraged by this blasphemy, attacked him
relentlessly. . . . Despite intense persecution, the community grew,
in numbers and in faith.19

The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 221

There are still intermittent quarrels between the Ahmadiyah and
the orthodox, but the Ahmadiyah are now generally accepted as a
legitimate sect of Islam.

The open assertion by the Black Muslims that it is their
destiny to inherit the earth and that the present rulers of this
world will soon fall upon evil days is certainly not unique in the
history of religions. Such a religious philosophy is at least as old
as the ancient Hebrews and at least as recent as the newest ad-
ventist Christian sect. The characteristic orientation of all re-
ligions has been the expectation that God's first pleasure is His
own elect, the elect being those who are pure in doctrine, correct
in ritual and, oftentimes, racially select. The multiple fractures
within the Catholic and Protestant communions respectively, and
the sects which elaborate every other major religion, provide ample
if disheartening evidence of this universal assumption.

Islam itself, although it has no significant racial bias, does
share this pronounced intolerance for the nonbeliever. To this
extent, the ground is prepared for orthodox Moslem acceptance,
under certain conditions, of the Black Muslims' racial hatred. One
Christian writer, while praising Islam's record of racial inclusive-
ness, has suggested that racial lines might be drawn and held even
by orthodox Islam, "if it got a foothold in Europe or America,
where the deeper racial prejudices seem most to flourish." He
cites the case of a Moslem missionary in this country meeting
separately with white and Negro faithful "because of the Christian
background of the white people."20

Racial hatred, wherever it is taught or practiced, reflects a
social depravity. It debases the hater, alienates the hated and
usually impairs the creative capacities of both. Yet history offers
almost no instance of a religious sub-group being expelled from
the parent communion because it teaches hatred of the outsider.
The Christian church, for example, was divided in its early years
over the issue of whether to admit gentiles; today it is in contro-
versy over the status of its Negro members. Yet never, in all its
turbulent history, has the church developed a tradition of exclud-
ing those whose racial views are repugnant to the mainstream of
Christian thought. Instead, the church has sought to preserve its

222 The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam

ties, hoping that time and circumstance, interpreted through the
spiritual emphases of the church, might work reform.

The most pertinent example, perhaps, is the split within
American Protestantism over the question of slavery. The South-
ern churches taught — and many still teach — that some races are
superior to others and that men's social destinies are divinely
predetermined by race. These churches formally withdrew from
communion with the Northern churches when they could reach no
agreement on the slavery issue, yet their status as Christian
churches was never in dispute. Even today, a number of Southern
Protestant churches proclaim the inferiority of the Negro, whose
role as a "hewer of wood and drawer of water" is said to be pre-
ordained by God Himself; and in the Mormon Church, racial bias
categorically excludes the Negro from full membership. Yet these
churches have not been expelled from the Christian communion,
nor are they even held in suspicion of heresy by their brothers in
Christ. Shall we expect any other religion, even Islam, to be more
insistent on brotherly love than we are ourselves?

In 1959, Malcolm X made a special trip to Egypt and other
Moslem countries to test the acceptability of the Black Muslim
Movement abroad. He was received cordially as a "Moslem
brother." Later that year, Muhammad and two of his sons made
a tour of several Moslem countries. The Messenger was recog-
nized as an important leader and was permitted to make the tradi-
tional Moslem pilgrimage to Mecca. He wrote to his followers in
the United States:

On my arrival in Jeddah, Arabia, December 23, 1959, it was almost a
necessity that I go to Mecca. The next day ... the authorities made
ready a car to take me and my two sons over the forty-mile distance
from Jeddah to that ancient city which is the glory of the Muslim
world of Islam.21

In Cairo, Muhammad reported that:

Here ... I met the Great Imam. He invited me to visit him, and I
have experienced great happiness . . . with him. He is over all the
Imams in ... Egypt. He placed a kiss upon my head, and I placed
a kiss on his hand.22

Back in the United States, the Muslim leader described his Islamic

The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 223

tour to some ninety-five hundred Negroes who gathered to hear
him in Los Angeles. In Boston and New York, meanwhile,
Malcolm X announced that the question of the Muslims' ortho-
doxy is "a closed issue," because "those who are not orthodox do
not go to Mecca."

The Political Implications

Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam is more than a religion:
it has served also as a political force, drawing together coalitions
of states for various purposes at various times. Today it is dynami-
cally important in shaping political alignments among Moslem
nations from Morocco to Indonesia — that is to say, across the
entire span of the African-Asian land mass. If these states could
establish a large and influential Moslem bloc in the United States,
their coalition would circle the earth.

Apart from the followers of Muhammad, there are scarcely
33,000 Moslems in the whole of North America — compared with
345,000 in South America, 12^ million in Europe and more than
400 million in Africa and Asia. This disproportion is due not so
much to the vitality of the Christian church as to America's
immigration policies, which discriminate against Africans and
Asians. To build an effective bloc in the United States, therefore,
the Moslem states would have to convert large numbers of Ameri-
can citizens to Islam — and this the Black Muslims are doing with
amazing success. The orthodox Moslem bodies in America are
rapidly being dwarfed, and their cries of protest are likely to fall
upon apathetic ears in the important Islamic capitals of the East.

Much has been made of an alleged link between the Black
Muslims and the United Arab Republic. The Muslims are accused
of accepting financial support from the Egyptians and of being
"pro-Nasser." There is no evidence to support the allegation of
financial support, and Muhammad has vigorously denied these
allegations:

Now it has been charged that I am receiving aid from some alien
government or ideology. These charges, of course, come from those
who resent the progress we have made toward enlightening our
people. I want to say here and now that these charges are absolutely

224 The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam

false. I do not receive any aid from the United Arab Republic; I do
not receive aid from the Communist party; there is not one dime
that comes to us from any source other than our own followers.23

But political favors do not always turn on money. The UAR has
shown little public recognition of the Movement, but Muslim
leaders have been welcomed enthusiastically abroad, and the
Movement has received important encouragement and advice from
Egyptian nationals in this country. The Muslims have responded
by considering themselves specifically "anti-Zionist" rather than
"anti-Semitic," and they are proud to identify themselves with
President Nasser, whose picture graces the walls of many Muslim
homes and temples.

Malcolm X has made a frank bid for UAR support, offering
the growth-potential of the Movement as a prime incentive. "The
Arabs," he asserts, "as a colored people, should make more effort
to reach the millions of colored people in America who are related
to the Arabs by blood." The Arab leaders' response to this appeal
is not known. But Malcolm's pledge that "these millions of col-
ored peoples would be completely in sympathy with the Arab
cause" was undoubtedly received with quiet appreciation.

In January 1958, Muhammad sent the following cablegram
to President Nasser, who was then host to the Afro-Asian Con-
ference:

Lt. President Gamal Abdel Nasser
President of the Egyptian Republic, and
Host to the A fro- Asian Conference

In the name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
Beloved Brothers of Africa and Asia:

As-Salaam-Alaikum. Your long lost Muslim Brothers here in America
pray that Allah's divine presence will be felt at this historic African-
Asian Conference, and give unity to our efforts for peace and brother-
hood.

Freedom, justice and equality for all Africans and Asians is of far-
reaching importance, not only to you of the East, but also to over
17,000,000 of your long-lost brothers of African-Asian descent here
in the West. . . . May our sincere desire for universal peace which
is being manifested at this great conference by all Africans and

The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam 225

Asians, bring about the unity and brotherhood among all our people
which we all so eagerly desire.

All success is from Allah.

As-Salaam-Alaikum:

Your Long-Lost Brothers of the West
Elijah Muhammad

Leader, Teacher and Spiritual Head of
The Nation of Islam in the West. . . .2*

The Pittsburgh Courier carried President Nasser's purported reply:

Mr. Elijah Muhammad:

Leader, teacher and spiritual head of the Nation of Islam in the West.

I have received your kind message expressing your good wishes on
the occasion of the African-Asian Conference. 1 thank you most
heartily for these noble sentiments.

May Allah always grant us help to work for the maintenance of peace,
which is the desire of all peoples. I extend my best wishes to our
brothers of Africa and Asia living in the West.

(Signed) Gamal Abdel Nasser25

In the summer of 1959 came Malcolm X's visit to the United
Arab Republic. The invitation was originally extended to Mu-
hammad, who then appointed Malcolm to make a preliminary
tour as his emissary. Malcolm was warmly received in Cairo and
Saudi Arabia by Arab officialdom, and he met all of the important
people in the Moslem Congress, thus insuring Muhammad's im-
pending visit against embarrassment. The Black Muslims were
taken as Moslems, and the Egyptians were delighted by the
throngs of black worshipers they saw on the 11" x 20" photo-
graphs Malcolm carried in his briefcase. They were also properly
appalled at his descriptions of the oppression of the Black Man in
America.

During his tour, Malcolm found that:

The people of Arabia are just like our people in America . . . ranging
from regal black to rich brown. But none are white. It is safe to
say that 99 per cent of them would be jim-crowed in the United
States of America.26

From Africa, he wrote:

Africa is the land of the future . . . definitely the land of tomorrow,

226 The Black Muslims and Orthodox Islam

and the African is the man of tomorrow. . . . Africa is the New
World, a world with a future ... in which the so-called American
Negroes are destined to play a key role. . . . Like the Asians, all
Africans consider America's treatment of Negro Americans the best
yardstick by which to measure the sincerity of America's offers on
this continent. . . . The veil of diplomatic art does not obscure the
vision of African thinkers when abuse of black Americans still
obtains.27

A few months later, Elijah Muhammad went to Cairo and
thence to the Holy City. (Strangely enough, Muhammad is not
fluent in Arabic. On the counsel of his advisors, he learned the
various Moslem prayers and creedal affirmations before setting
out on his trip.) On his return to America, he declared: "The
whole world of Islam is behind me. I was received as a brother
and a leader. I did not have to ask for a visa to make the Hajj
[pilgrimage] to Mecca, the Holy City. They asked me to go."28

That these visits of top Muslim leaders to the Islamic coun-
tries have political implications is taken for granted by most ob-
servers. The precise weight of these implications remains open to
speculation. However, it is reasonable to conclude that the con-
troversial Muslim leader could hardly have been admitted to
Mecca in the face of the opposition of American Moslems unless
he had powerful friends abroad to sponsor and receive him.
Because of his heterodoxy, that sponsorship is unlikely to have
been primarily religious. It seems possible that some Moslem
leaders, at least, found the political possibilities sufficiently impres-
sive to overbalance the religious risk.

9 The Meaning for America

The American conscience is like a Georgia mule drowsing
under a mulberry tree: it will twitch where the fly bites, now here,
now there, and so to sleep again.

This lethargy is the problem of America. She is neither
more evil nor more immoral than any other nation, but she has a
jaded social consciousness that has not been truly alerted since the
time of the abolitionists. The 1954 school desegregation decisions
and the student sit-ins have troubled her sleep, but they have not
yet awakened her. She has not been stung in a tender enough
spot in recent times. Perhaps the Black Muslims will find such a
spot; if they do, and if they sting hard enough, we may all be
benefited by the smarting.

I. THE SPECTRUM OF NEGRO PROTEST

A Vestige of Faith

The American Negro does not truly hate the white man.
Not yet. For a long time, Negroes have tried to convince them-
selves that the white man's resistance to social change derives not
from a sense of racial superiority but from a twisted nationalism.
Some Negroes, at least, are still willing to believe that the white
man behaves as he does because he is American.

For most of us, there is no value quite so exalted as that
implicit in being "American." All other values are subsidiary —
religion, political affiliation, even moral consciousness. To be an
American means to be associated with a great civilization, a
unique civilization. We may share certain values with the rest of
the world — values of religion and art, for example — but only we
are Americans. We are the founders and developers of and heirs
to the mightiest nation on earth, with a heritage unduplicated

227

228 The Meaning for America

anywhere else in the world. But "American" also has an implica-
tion of color. Few of us have really lost the feeling that this is a
"white man's country" and that all other races enjoy it by the
white man's sufferance. We do not say this bluntly: it is consid-
ered in poor taste and, if quoted abroad, not in the national inter-
est. But we act as if we were certain of its truth and validity. Our
textbooks, mass media and community behavior confirm this white
nationalism everywhere.

A diminishing number of Negroes, therefore, believe that the
Negro is rejected in America not primarily because of his race but
because he is "not truly American." The Negro, they believe, is
considered an alien, an outsider, for whom special adjustments
must be made in law and custom. His color merely identifies him
and serves to warn "real Americans" of his presence. The imme-
diate result, of course, is the same: the Negro is barred from full
participation in the values of citizenship. But the long-range
prospect for a solution would be vastly different. If discrimination
is based on pure racial antagonism, the white man will have to
change his prejudice, for the Negro cannot change his skin. But
if discrimination is based on national sentiment, the white man
need not revise his thinking so drastically. He can still draw the
comforting, sharp line between "American" and "not American";
he need only realize that his Negro neighbors are on the "Ameri-
can" side of the line. From there it would be a short step to
accepting the Negro as an equal.

Sophistry? Perhaps — a sophistry encouraged by the Negro's
desperate wish for a peaceful way out of his second-class prison.
And like his more naive, more pathetic trust in the white man's
ultimate "good intentions," it has been all but completely shat-
tered. A vestige of faith remains — but for how long? If the white
man's conscience remains drugged, the flood of disillusion will
soon sweep even this last frail hope away.

From time to time, the trusting Negro has sought to prod
the white man's moral sense indirectly — through the churches, the
labor unions and various interracial organizations — and by per-
sonal appeal. Always there has been a willingness to give the
white man the benefit of every doubt. But nothing changed; and
after a hundred years of waiting and hoping, the Negro finally

The Meaning for America 229

went to court. Where he had been willing to accept "considera-
tion," he now began demanding his rights — his rights to work,
vote, buy a home, eat a meal, see a movie, worship in a church,
ride a bus, sit in a public park and send his children to school on
the same terms as all of America's other first-class citizens. But
the courts are slow; litigation is expensive; and the implementation
of court rulings seems to be peculiarly uncertain in the area of
civil rights.

So there has developed, in the last decade, a wide and dra-
matic spectrum of extralegal Negro protest. The passive Negro,
who trusts that God and the NAACP will salvage his dignity while
he concentrates on avoiding trouble, is rapidly becoming extinct.
Those Negroes (most of them young) who still believe in the
possibility of peaceful change have developed a bold but gentle
technique to quicken the white man's conscience. They simply
ignore restrictive laws and go wherever they know they have a
moral right to be — on trains and busses, in restaurants and stores,
public beaches and houses of God. These are not "angry young
men"; they are not "bitter." They are just tired of waiting.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the Black Muslims.
They are angry; they are bitter; and they are also tired of waiting.
Their response to white nationalism is extreme, and their militancy
is barely restrained. But America can benefit from the lesson they
seem intent upon teaching.

Group Identification: The Corporate Response

In Chapter II, we noted three types of response to pressure
and discrimination: avoidance, acceptance and aggression. These
represented the attempts on the part of individuals to adjust to
social hostilities directed against them. These same channels of
response may also find a corporate expression.

People organize in the face of a persistent threat. The plan-
tation "folk Negro" is adjusting to social hostility when he goes
out alone to steal the white boss's com or potatoes on Saturday
night. He is no less adjusting when he loses himself "beyond the
Jordan" in company with his neighbors on Sunday morning. One
response is a personal expression of resentment and aggression;

230 The Meaning for America

the other is a corporate escape. Each kind of response, personal
and corporate, has its special advantages in relation to the situa-
tion that excites it.

Minorities are created by pressures exerted by the majority.
If the majority did not choose to exclude a group, the group
would not be a minority; it would be an indistinguishable part of
the whole social body. In the same way, the sense of unity and
cohesion which we call group identification develops in response
to outside pressures. It is a way of ensuring not identity (the
majority has seen to that) but the survival of the members and
their most cherished values.

Professor Arnold Rose believes that "group identification is
the minority's major defense against discrimination and prejudice
from the majority."1 This major defense seems to be clearly
effective. Wherever men have exhibited a corporate unity in the
face of social oppression, they have had respect and ofttimes an
abatement of persecution. The recent desegregation of eating
facilities in the South is a classic example. In six months of con-
certed effort, Negro students (supported by some whites) caused
the desegregation of lunch counters in about seventy Southern
communities.2 To be sure, organized resistance seldom maintains
the "good will" of the prejudiced majority; but only a diseased
good will is linked with discrimination for its very existence.
Indeed, the very presence of social abuse is de facto evidence of
the absence of a healthy good will. What the minority group
loses by organization is not so much "good will" as an artificially
maintained rapprochement.

But group identification also has its hazards.

Group identification . . . may create foolhardiness and a tendency
to martyrdom without securing the gain that risk-taking can secure.
It creates a group pride that may become satisfied with mediocrity.
It frequently promotes chauvinism and nationalism, which volun-
tarily separates the group from the broader opportunities and contacts
that it presumably is fighting to secure.3

It may, in short, militate against the very aims it seeks to achieve.
A group which becomes enamoured of its own achievements, real
or mythological, or which blinds itself to the accomplishments of
other groups closes the door to its own improvement. And the

The Meaning for America 231

image it presents to others may be so threatening as to increase
tensions or cause outright alarm.

Most ethnic minorities in the United States can look forward
to eventual assimilation, for their distinguishing characteristics are
cultural rather than biological.4 Consequently, their organizations
tend to exist primarily for sociability rather than for defense or
protest. Such organizations came into being as temporary expedi-
ents, until the organizational life of the majority is opened to their
members, and the least severely excluded minorities show the least
incidence of in-group associations. European immigrants, for
example, have a very low incidence of such associations (except
those related to their churches), while American Negroes probably
have more in-group organizations than all other minorities com-
bined. A few years ago the Common Council for American Unity
estimated that there are only 155 fraternal organizations, with
fewer than 3 million members, for all the different nationality
groups in the United States.5 But this figure did not include racial
groups. It would probably have been doubled by the inclusion of
Negro fraternal groups alone, not to mention the Negro defense
and protest organizations, which span the entire spectrum from
the ultra-radicalism of the Black Muslims to the ultra-conservatism
of the National Urban League.

Jews, like Negroes, have developed a large number of vol-
untary associations, though most Jews do not belong to them.0
"When Jews find themselves unwanted in fraternities, country
clubs, and other sociable organizations, they form their own in
great numbers to 'demonstrate' that they can enjoy themselves
without benefit of admission to the majority's sociable groups."7
Neither group does so without resentment; but the Jew, who has
a unique, well-defined and clearly remembered cultural heritage to
sustain him, probably suffers less from exclusion from the common
life of the majority group than does the Negro, who has adopted
the cultural heritage of the group which excludes him.

Moreover, some Jews can and do pass into the dominant
white group, often through the simple expedient of changing their
names. Like Negroes, some may pass temporarily in order to
enjoy advantages or avoid discrimination in business or social life.
In a New York suburb, for example, there is a Jew whose legal

232 The Meaning for America

name is John Smith; and as Dr. John Smith he has a good dental
practice. How he would fare if he practiced as Jacob Goldstein
is problematic. Dr. Smith himself has no doubt but that, in the
community where he lives, there is a considerably larger practice
available to Dr. Smith than there would be to, say, Dr. Goldstein.

America has never been a land of unlimited opportunity for
Jews. As soon as they arrived on our shores, they found them-
selves confronted with the same bigotry and hatred that had driven
them from Spain, from Russia, from every corner of the globe.
But the Jews fought back. They organized for the protection of
the group. First, the Independent Order B'nai B'rith, or "Sons of
the Covenant," was founded in New York City in 1843. Three
quarters of a century later, in 1913, the Anti-Defamation League
was organized as a unit of B'nai B'rith specifically for the purpose
of combating anti-Semitism. It does so primarily by investigating
and exposing anti-Semitic groups.

The American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Con-
gress (which uses legal action, educational propaganda and social
research as weapons against bigotry), the Jewish War Veterans,
the Jewish Labor Committee — these and a substantial number of
other national, state and local organizations serve the Jewish
community in two ways. They stand guard against prejudice and
discrimination, keeping a watchful eye on such areas as civil
rights, immigration laws, American foreign policy in the Middle
East, politics and interfaith relations. And they caution the Jewish
community itself against yielding blindly to a false acceptance. In
many communities, Jews can be accepted warmly by the majority
if they will simply give up their Jewish identity and cultural values.
This is, of course, an indirect anti-Semitism, and the organizations
seek to meet it by acting as rallying points for the preservation of
Jewish values.

Except for these Jewish groups and the comparable Negro
groups, there are in America few widely known minority protest
or protective organizations. Perhaps the only such organizations
exist among the Japanese-Americans, who, like Negroes, suffer
from high social visibility. Most Japanese-American groups are
social and mutual aid societies (such as the kenjinkai, or organi-
zations of families originating in the same ken, or prefecture).

The Meaning for America 233

For many years, however, the Japanese Association of North
America sought to protect Japanese-Americans from discrimina-
tion and was active in many legal cases on their behalf. Unfor-
tunately, unlike its counterpart, the NAACP, the JANA was
neither broadly based nor successful: all its members were Japa-
nese, most of them alien, and the group lost nearly every case it
entered. Eventually it confined its activities to promoting social
welfare and Americanization among its members.

A far more effective social action group, the Japanese-
Americans Citizenship League, developed out of the old JANA.
Unlike the parent organization, the JACL admits only American
citizens to membership. It has an able and energetic leadership,
and like many Negro organizations, it has the support of some
liberal whites. The JACL is both a political and a community
service organization; it has entered the courts in a number of cases
with conspicuous success.

Spanish-speaking Americans, the second largest unassimi-
lated ethnic group in the country,8 have organized a number of
local or regional groups which concern themselves with problems
arising from discrimination. The largest of these is the United
League of Latin American Citizens, commonly known as
ULLAC.9 Most of the 3Y2 million Spanish-speaking minority,
however, is concentrated in the Southwest (almost a third of them
in Texas),10 and ULLAC necessarily confines its major activities
to state and regional problems.

It is the Negroes, then, more than any other minority, who
find a corporate release in social, protective and protest organiza-
tions. It is the Negroes who give decidedly the most emphasis to
protest organizations and whose protest finds the widest range of
corporate expression. But all Negro protest groups, across the
entire spectrum, have one thing in common: a new sense of
urgency, which sets them sharply apart from the comparable
groups of other minorities.

Every Negro protest organization today is, in its own way,
impatient. Each is learning to seize the moral initiative. Each is
preparing to force America to a showdown. And sooner or later,
America will have to yield — if not to the soft-spoken, reasonable
demands of the conservative organizations, then to the strident,

234 The Meaning for America

extreme and vengeful demands of the black nationalists. For the
moment — a brief and fateful moment — the choice is still in our
hands.

II. SEPARATIST ORGANIZATIONS

Most Negro organizations are restricted in membership to
Negroes alone. This is not entirely a matter of choice: white
separatism rules out any realistic alternative, except in organiza-
tions whose sole interest is civil rights. A few white men are will-
ing to work with the Negro on strictly racial matters; almost none
are willing to relax with him, pray with him or work with him on
issues other than civil rights. On the other hand, Negro organiza-
tions of a separatist nature — that is, of deliberate in-group mem-
bership— are seriously hampered by their very exclusiveness in
such civil-rights activities as they do undertake.

Making a virtue of necessity, the Negro turns to these or-
ganizations primarily for a sense of group identification, which
serves him as an important bastion against feelings of inferiority
and helplessness. In such groups he discovers (in Lloyd Warner's
words) "a focal point of organization and ... the necessary
feelings of strength and security."

Until fairly recent times, the Negro's church was the most
important organization standing between him and the unremitting
pressures of our caste-oriented society. To a great extent, the
church was escapist. E. Franklin Frazier observes that it "has two
roots: one in the efforts of the free Negroes in the North to escape
from their inferior position in white churches and assert their
independence, and the other in what has been aptly called the
'invisible' institution on the plantations during slavery."11 Benja-
min Mays concludes that "if the Negro had had greater freedom
in the social, economic, and political spheres, fewer Negroes would
have been 'called' to preach, and there would have been fewer
Negro churches."12

Indeed, in one large biracial denomination today, the Negro
leadership is said not merely to tolerate but to endorse the con-
tinuance of separate congregations, with the "inferiority" of the
Negro membership accepted in exchange for the "equality" of the

The Meaning for America 235

Negro clergy and other church officials. A national news maga-
zine reports:

Racial segregation should be continued in the Methodist Church for
the foreseeable future ... a Methodist Commission reported last
week. There was no minority dissent to the report. . . . Moreover,
leaders of the 360,000 Methodist Negroes . . . agreed with the de-
cision. The reason for this extraordinary state of affairs [is that] . . .
this segregation [has] brought some advantages for Negro Methodist
in terms of representation and influence in the Church. . . . There are
four Negro Methodist bishops in the [all Negro] Central Jurisdiction,
for instance, while the theoretically non-segregated Protestant Epis-
copal Church in the U.S.A. has none at all in the continental U.S.13

The participants to this arrangement do not wholly agree with the
popular interpretation of it, but that interpretation suggests a
widespread feeling in the Negro community that the church has
withdrawn from any effective interest in social action.

The Negro church has not, of course, been entirely escapist:

The [Negro] churches have sometimes been charged with providing
an escapist philosophy and so diverting the Negro protest. There is,
no doubt, considerable truth in this charge, especially with respect
to the revivalist churches to which many lower-class Negroes belong.
But the all-Negro church was probably the very first protest organi-
zation under slavery, and . . . many Negro ministers [today] take their
texts from those sections of the Bible which favor equality and fra-
ternity.14

It remains true, nevertheless, that the Negro church has never been
a significant instrument of effective protest. Furthermore, the
Negro clergy has yielded a considerable amount of its influence in
recent years to business and to other professions. Only lately are
there some indications of a renaissance in clerical leadership; and
even now, the most significant social leadership is offered by those
denominations that lack institutionalized hierarchy. "For the most
part, Negro churches have contributed to the perpetuation of the
American racial system through the reinforcement of the extant
mores."15 In spite of its estimated 10 million members,16 the
Negro church has sponsored comparatively few programs against
the discrimination it exemplifies.17

The Negro has traditionally relied upon various types of fra-
ternal organizations to assure him comfort and companionship

236 The Meaning for America

while he lives and often to bury him (or at least to dignify his
funeral) when he dies. His lodges and orders have frequently
been the only arena in which he could exercise his political inter-
ests; and in many communities, except for his churches, they have
been the only social and recreational outlets available to him. In
recent years the fraternal orders have diminished in importance,
yet even today one rarely encounters a Negro community without
at last an order of Masons or Elks. The latter organization, under
the leadership of such astute politicians as Republican George W.
Lee of Memphis, has long been an important factor in national
politics. As a general rule, however, neither politics nor social
protest has been a prime concern of the fraternal orders, and they
have had little influence on the lightening of the Negro's racial
burdens.

Negro fraternal organizations date back to 1775, at least,
for on March 6 of that year, fifteen Negroes were initiated into a
British lodge of Freemasons at Boston. After the Revolution, the
white American Masons refused their Negro brothers permission
to set up a lodge, but the Negroes applied directly to the Grand
Lodge of England and were immediately granted a charter. The
first Negro lodge was established in Boston in 1787. Through
much the same procedure, the Odd Fellows were chartered in
New York City in 1843 under direct warrant from England.

The Colored Knights of Pythias was probably unique in its
origin. In 1870, a group of Negro citizens petitioned the Supreme
Lodge for membership. When the petition was denied, several
fair-skinned Negroes, passing as white, infiltrated the order and
learned its ritual. They then set up a Supreme Council and
organized a lodge of their own in Vicksburg, Mississippi. It is
ironic that the order from which they were excluded had itself
been created "to extend friendship, charity, and benevolence
among men." Negro lodges were soon organized throughout the
country.

Perhaps the most important of the older fraternal and
benevolent associations is the Improved Benevolent and Protective
Order of Elks, founded in Cincinnati in 1898. By 1946 the Elks
had a half million members and owned property and U. S. War
Bonds worth more than $50 million. The Order had given

The Meaning for America 237

$500,000 in scholarships to Negro college students through its
Grand Commissioner of Education and had contributed important
equipment to Meharry and Howard University medical schools.
Its Civil Liberties Department has been active in civil rights litiga-
tion on behalf of Negroes.

Eight college-based Greek letter societies for Negroes repre-
sent a membership of almost 135,000 men and women.18 These
societies, like the older fraternal organizations, grew out of the
exclusion of Negroes from participation in the normal social life
of the community to which education and status would have nor-
mally entitled them.

The first Negro fraternity — not a college society — was or-
ganized by a group of men of similar interests and social status in
Philadelphia in 1904. Sigma Pi Phi, now more commonly referred
to as "the Boule" has traditionally conceived itself as an "aristoc-
racy of talent" and has, in fact, included among its members some
of America's most distinguished Negroes. E. Franklin Frazier
describes it as apparently "governed still by that [outlook] of the
'isolated aristocracy of talent' which comprised its membership 40
or more years ago. . . . But the spirit of social exclusiveness has
persisted while the emphasis on intellectual and professional at-
tainment has disappeared."19 In recent years, the Boule has waned
in prestige and membership, for the college fraternities are more
attractive to the "talent" that used to embellish its rolls.

The first Negro college fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, was
organized at Cornell University in 1906, when, "because of race
prejudice these students were not eligible for membership in white
fraternities and were excluded from general participation in the
social activities of the University."20 Five years later, the same
experience gave birth to a second fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi.
Two others followed at Negro colleges in 1911 (Omega Psi Phi)
and 1914 (Phi Beta Sigma), as did four sororities during the
same general period.

Unlike the Boule, the college fraternities (mainly through
their graduate chapters) have participated vigorously in the fight
for full citizenship and have shown a constructive over-all concern
for the welfare of the Negro community. For several years, these
organizations jointly supported the American Council on Human

238 The Meaning for America

Rights (ACHR), a Washington-based organization concerned with
minority-group protection. One sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha,
maintained a lobby in Washington to influence legislation affecting
Negroes; it has also spent thousands of dollars sponsoring an
extended Health Project to provide medical and dental care for
Negroes in several Mississippi counties. Another, Delta Sigma
Theta, has a comprehensive program including support of child
welfare and aid to delinquent girls. The fraternity Kappa Alpha
Psi has an extensive "Guide Right" program for counseling Negro
high school youths and encouraging them to prepare themselves
for creative participation in American vocational and professional
life. All the Greek letter societies have contributed important
financial support to the NAACP.

In the Negro community, these societies have a community-
wide responsibility that is not paralleled by their white counter-
parts. They began as social clubs, and they remain so; but their
very existence is a sobering reminder of the unusual responsibilities
that devolve upon educated Negroes in terms of leadership and
example. The societies are controlled by Negro intellectual and
professional leaders, rather than being centered on the college
campuses; and while they represent a certain exclusiveness (only
college men and women of acceptable academic performance may
become members), they are dedicated to a creative concern for
the entire racial group.

III. INTEGRATIVE ORGANIZATIONS

Most Negro organizations are separatist in membership; only
a few find it advisable or necessary to invite white participation.
There are two main reasons. First, a biracial invitation involves,
for the Negro, the risk of a humiliating rebuff. Second, each
member of a biracial group must forego the sense of strength and
security — a counterbalance to his individual weakness — that
comes with racial solidarity. This is true even though the massive
proportion of the membership might be, in fact, of the same race.
No organization would expose its members to such risks if it did
not consider integration itself an issue of extreme importance. It is
not surprising, therefore, that the few integrative (not racially

The Meaning for America 239

exclusive) organizations which do exist in the Negro community
have integration as their fundamental purpose for being.

Since the term "integration" produces, in many people, an
excruciating anxiety,21 a few definitions may be in order. Integra-
tion, for our present purposes, refers to the freedom of a minority
to participate in the total life of the community without necessarily
merging with the majority group. In an integrated society, each
minority is assured of this freedom by specific laws, a tradition of
justice and a prevailing sense of respect for human dignity and
aspiration. It is also free, however, to retain its own identity and
cultural values. Assimilation, on the other hand, refers to the
merging of a minority into the general community and the gradual
disappearance of its identity and its unique cultural values. In an
assimilated society, a minority group does not cling — and is not
forced to cling — together. Its members flow into the general com-
munity, accepted and fully mobile in every area of social and
cultural intercourse.22

Unlike the Jew, the Negro need not be troubled by the possi-
bility of assimilation into the mainstream of American life. Even
those Negroes who consider it desirable know that it is not soon
to be achieved. "Assimilation," Gunnar Myrdal has warned, "is
likely to occur only when the majority accepts the idea." Other
observers are more specific: "When the combined cultural and
biological traits are highly divergent from those of the host society,
the subordination of the group will be very great, their subsystem
strong, the period of assimilation long, and the process slow and
painful."23 The American Negro does not seriously address either
his efforts or his hopes to such a goal.

But if he is unexcited about assimilation, he is intensely
serious about integration, and an increasing number of his organi-
zations are devoting themselves energetically to that end.

Probably the best-known organization commonly associated
with Negroes is the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. The NAACP was created by liberal whites and
militant Negroes, largely in response to the increasing outrages
against Negroes in the South early in this century. J. Saunders
Redding reports that:

In the first decade of the [present] century, nearly a thousand of

240 The Meaning for America

them [Negroes] were lynched in public spectacles that outmatched
the Roman circus for savagery and obscenity. No appeal to con-
science was effective. Civil, legal, and moral rights meant nothing.24

White supremacy and a white disposition to violence followed the
Negroes as, in terror and despair, they migrated north and west.
In the summer of 1908, a race riot — precipitated by a false accu-
sation of rape, and led by a white woman, who was already under
indictment as a criminal and out of jail on bond — focused the
attention of the nation on Springfield, Illinois. "Here in the home
of Abraham Lincoln, a mob containing many of the town's best
citizens raged for two days, killed and wounded scores of Negroes,
and drove thousands from the city."25 In the wake of the riot, the
city of Springfield discharged more than fifty Negro employees,
although their efficiency and fidelity were not in doubt. The state
of Illinois dismissed still others. A thousand disheartened Negroes,
"many of them substantial and respected citizens, left the city for
parts unknown."

It was against this background that the NAACP came into
being. In an article in the Independent, the prominent Southern
journalist William English Walling declared:

Either the spirit of the abolitionists, of Lincoln and Lovejoy, must
be revived and we must come to treat the Negro on a plane of abso-
lute political and social equality, or [Southern demagogues] will soon
have transferred the race war to the North.26

Walling was moved not so much by the riot itself as by the impli-
cations of such terror for the national welfare. If unchecked, such
behavior could destroy the political democracy and the unity of a
nation only two generations emerged from civil strife. "Who
realizes the seriousness of the situation," he appealed, "and what
large and powerful body of citizens is ready ... to aid?"

As a result of Walling's article — and through the good offices
of Mary White Ovington, a wealthy white social worker in New
York City — a call "for a national conference on the Negro ques-
tion" was issued on Lincoln's birthday of the following year. The
response was indicative of the concern of men and women of
stature over the unhappy state of affairs. To the meeting came
such notables as W. E. B. DuBois, Jane Addams, John Dewey,
Moorefield Storey, Oswald Garrison Villard, Rabbi Stephen Wise,

The Meaning for America 241

William Lloyd Garrison and J. G. Phelps Stokes. Fifty-three
persons signed the statement, and the NAACP was formally in-
corporated in 1910, committed to an uncompromising policy of
racial equality.

The NAACP today "is a large membership organization,
with some 350,000 members located in almost every state. . . .
More than 50 percent of the members are in the 17 southern and
border states. Both the membership and the national staff of 90
persons are multiracial, with an estimated 8 to 12 percent of
whites among the members."27 All presidents of the NAACP
have been white, as are twelve of the forty-eight members of the
present board of directors. The executive secretary, Roy Wilkins,
and the chief legal counsel, Thurgood Marshall, are Negroes. The
treasurer is Allan Knight Chalmers, a white professor at the
Boston University School of Theology.

The Board of Directors has included such well known per-
sons as Walter Reuther, Ralph Bunche, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt,
Benjamin Mays, Herbert H. Lehman and Judge William H. Hastie.
Among the vice presidents (the association has twenty-one) have
been Norman Cousins, Senator Wayne Morse, Rabbi Judah Cohn,
Oscar Hammerstein II, Bishop W. J. Walls, Eric Johnston and
A. Philip Randolph.

In the fifty years of its existence, the NAACP has done much
to loosen the collar of caste that has chafed the Negro's neck for
so long. It has made a triple-threat attack — legal, legislative and
educational — against disprivilege and discrimination. Its legal
efforts have included forty-six appeals to the United States Su-
preme Court; it has won all but four. Among the victories have
been court rulings that racial segregation is unconstitutional in
public schools and colleges, in public parks and playgrounds, in
intrastate busses and in interstate travel accommodations of all
kinds. The NAACP has won Supreme Court decisions invalidat-
ing the enforcement of racially restrictive covenants in housing; it
has more firmly established the Negro's right and opportunity to
vote; it has enabled him to escape the indignity of eating in segre-
gated dining rooms or waiting in segregated waiting rooms when
he travels beyond the borders of his state. It has been a major
factor in the passage of fair employment legislation in fifteen

242 The Meaning for America

states and has been successful in its efforts to eliminate discrimina-
tion in public housing in at least eight states. It has championed
the student sit-in movement and provided expert counsel for stu-
dents who have been jailed in the course of such demonstrations.

The effectiveness of the NAACP can perhaps be seen most
clearly through the attempts that have been made to destroy it.
In 1956 alone, Louisiana, Alabama and Texas banned the organi-
zation by court decree, and the Virginia legislature moved to halt
its activities in that state. Several Southern states have laws which
make it impossible for public servants such as teachers to belong
to the organization and still retain their jobs. The list goes on and
on, for the NAACP has made more important enemies than any
other organization with which Negroes have ever been associated
in their journey along "the lonesome road." This could well be
the best index of its success.

Like the NAACP, the Urban League is meticulously bi-
racial. Of its executive board of fifteen members, eight are white
and seven are Negroes. The league has always had a white presi-
dent and a Negro executive secretary. And like the NAACP, the
league looks to the combined efforts of Negroes and whites to
find some workable solutions for the country's racial problems.
The Reverend J. A. McDaniel, executive secretary of the Memphis
Urban League, interprets the philosophy of the national organiza-
tion as follows:

The Urban League is an interracial organization, and it strives to
work within the framework of interracial cooperation. We [Negroes
and whites] are interdependent — one upon the other. We of the
Urban League do not believe that the Negro can resolve his problems
alone; nor can the white man [resolve his] alone. But working to-
gether in the American philosophy of teamwork, we can resolve our
differences and our problems.28

But here the similarity between these organizations ends.

"If the NAACP was too radical to merit the support of the
philanthropists who gave to Negro causes," observes J. Saunders
Redding, "the National Urban League was not."29 In this dis-
tinction lies the answer to much of the present confusion about
the roles of these organizations. The NAACP receives the greater
part of its financing from membership fees, individual contribu-

The Meaning for America 243

tions and foundation grants. The Urban League is dependent
almost entirely upon local resources, such as community chests.
The league's program and philosophy, therefore, must remain
within certain conservative limits; it must remain acceptable to its
local sources of support. Yet the league is governed by national
policies; its program emphases vary according to local needs and
conditions, but even in the South it hews closely to its founding
commitments.

The league was born as a coalition of three social agencies
in New York City in 1910. Around 1905 or 1906 two interracial
groups — the Committee for Improving the Industrial Conditions
of Negroes in New York City and the League for the Protection
of Colored Women — were organized by certain white philanthro-
pists in an attempt to ameliorate social conditions among Negroes
in New York. In 1910 a similar group, the Committee on Urban
Conditions Among Negroes, made its debut. In 1911 these three
organizations merged to become the National League of Urban
Conditions Among Negroes (later abbreviated to National Urban
League), espousing the theme that the Negro needs "not alms but
opportunity — opportunity to work at the job for which the Negro
[is] best fitted, with equal pay for equal work, and equal oppor-
tunity for advancement." This has remained the league's con-
trolling philosophy, and "jobs for Negroes" has received its major
program emphasis, although other services are frequently made
available.

The league today maintains fifty-eight branches in twenty-
nine states, with twelve affiliates in the South. (Its executive
offices, like those of the NAACP, are in New York City.) Along
with screening, training and selling of Negro labor, most local
affiliates offer a multitude of other services. They may operate
day nurseries and baby clinics, promote health weeks, find homes
for wayward girls, provide individual testing and counseling serv-
ices, serve as clearinghouses for information about Negroes or
advise government or municipal agencies on matters affecting the
Negro community. But the primary concern of every local Urban
League is to find jobs, more jobs and better jobs for Negro citizens.

Like the NAACP, the National Urban League has been criti-
cized by members of both races as being "too radical" or "too

244 The Meaning for America

conservative." It is probably fairer to say that each local league
moves as rapidly as local conditions warrant. Sometimes it moves
slightly in advance of the community it has undertaken to serve,
but it never moves so far ahead as to isolate itself and its program
from the good will and financial support of its interracial sup-
porters. In contrast to the NAACP, the National Urban League
pioneers without being adventurous, and the type of interracial
rapport it seeks to establish could hardly be accomplished in any
other way. Its services and methods, though unspectacular, are
very important, for through its program the conditions that pro-
duce potential Black Muslims are being quietly — though slowly —
eliminated.

As Gunnar Myrdal has suggested, no single organization can
be effective alone in combating racial prejudice, for no single
organization can work simultaneously through speed and gradual-
ness, through assertiveness and compromise. A variety of spe-
cialized groups concentrating on limited and particular problems
is far more successful than any multifaceted, monolithic organiza-
tion could be — far more capable of exciting the imagination and
eliciting the support of major segments of the general population.

For this reason, a number of Negro (or Negro-oriented)
antisegregation organizations have come into being or become
prominent since 1954, when the Supreme Court rejected the
""separate but equal" doctrine for public schools. Perhaps the
most famous of these groups is the Montgomery Improvement
Association, organized in 1955 by Dr. Martin Luther King and
his associates in Montgomery, Alabama. The MIA grew out of
a protest against segregated seating on the Montgomery city
busses. It eventually won the support of most of the 50,000
Negroes in that city and of thousands of people of every race
throughout the world. For more than a year, the Negroes of
Montgomery walked to their jobs, to school and to church, rather
than submit any longer to the indignities and abuse of segregated
seating on public busses. Eventually, segregation on the busses
was outlawed, as it has been in many another city since. Dr. King
moved to Atlanta to continue his work as president of a new
organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
which stresses nonviolent action as a technique for effecting social

The Meaning for America 245

change. But the MIA remains as an organ of protest and a symbol
of the Montgomery Negroes' determination to be "first class."

For a number of years, the Atlanta-based Southern Regional
Council has worked quietly behind the scenes to keep open the
channels of communication between Negroes and whites in the
South. The biracial council does not consider itself a "race-rela-
tions" organization in the strictest sense of that word; it works
toward equal opportunities for both races as a means to a higher
standard of well-being for all men. The council operates in twelve
Southern states. It compiles data and statistics, provides informa-
tion on racial frictions and interracial achievements, and strives to
reduce conflict while producing equality of opportunity. Its sev-
eral agencies are professionally staffed with social scientists and
experts in human relations.

The student sit-in movement has introduced more direct
action, though it has pledged itself to techniques of nonviolence.
This movement began as a spontaneous rejection of segregation
on February 1, 1960, when four Negro students who had been
shopping at a Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina,
sat down at the lunch counter and requested service. They were
refused but continued to wait patiently — a gesture that fired the
popular imagination and was quickly imitated elsewhere. The
movement spread rapidly throughout the South; and in less than
a year, some eating facilities in about a hundred cities had been
desegregated. In Atlanta, the sit-ins crystallized into a structured
organization with a permanent headquarters.30 Scores of students
have been arrested and jailed, but there is no sign of abatement in
the protests of the Negro students and their white allies. They
remain undaunted, even in the face of repeated demonstrations by
the once-dreaded Ku Klux Klan.

Numerous other direct-action groups have also appeared,
some in specific localities and others — such as the Committee on
Racial Equality (CORE)— with nationwide interests. As the
crisis becomes more acute, new groups will doubtless arise and
take their places beside them. For the widespread fear and intimi-
dation, which characterized the illiterate Negroes of another age,
is gone forever. Today's generation of Negro youth are not afraid.
They are determined to change the Negro's status now — by non-

246 The Meaning for America

violent action, if nonviolence will work. So long as they have a
vestige of faith in the white man's latent decency, their strength
will be exerted through integrative organizations to shape an inte-
grated society. But if that flickering faith is allowed to perish,
black nationalism may feed sumptuously on their despair.

IV. THE BLACK MUSLIM MOVEMENT

The Black Muslims constitute a unique movement: a dy-
namic social protest that moves upon a religious vehicle. The
Movement's main emphases are upon social action. Yet it is none
the less essentially a religion — a religion of protest.

Religion addresses itself to the ultimate problems of human
life. "It is the refusal to capitulate to death, to give up in the face
of frustration, to allow hostility to tear apart one's human associa-
tions."31 It gives meaning and depth to life in the face of experi-
ences that appear meaningless and shallow. But it may also con-
centrate the strength of the individual or community for an imme-
diate challenge to intolerable injustice or repression.

The beliefs and rites that make up a religion are the expressions of
those who have felt the problems most intensively, who have been
most acutely sensitive to the tragedies of death, the burdens of frus-
tration, the sense of failure, the disruptive effects of hostility. Pow-
ered by the strength of their feelings, . . . religious innovators have
created "solutions" appropriate to the enormity of the problems . . .
[which] have brought their adherents some relief. Thus religions are
built to carry the "peak load" of human emotional need. . . .

In this sense, religion can be thought of as a kind of residual means
of response and adjustment. It is an attempt to explain what cannot
otherwise be explained; to achieve power, all other powers having
failed us; to establish poise and serenity in the face of evil and
suffering that other efforts have failed to eliminate.32

It is within this frame of reference that the Black Muslim Move-
ment must be evaluated.

The Edge of the Spectrum

The spectrum of Negro protest organizations covers a wide
span, from the most reticent separatist groups to the most deter-

The Meaning for America 247

mined integrative movements. At what point on this span are the
Black Muslims to be found?

On the surface, the Movement seems to be unequivocally
separatist, with a restricted membership and an overwhelming
dedication to group identification, racial solidarity and mutual aid.
But the membership is not restricted to Negroes; it is restricted
to Black Men, who comprise all mankind except the white race.
The Movement is thus highly integrative in intent. Yet whites and
Negroes account for very nearly the entire population of America,
so the Movement is clearly separatist in effect.

As a separatist group, the Muslims might be expected to
show a strong awareness of group solidarity, backed by a generous
program of mutual aid. And so they do. Like other Negro
separatist groups, they might also be expected to pay only casual
attention to racial tensions and the prospect of integration in
America. The Muslims, however, are obsessed with this issue.
They reject and detest the very idea of integration, but discussion
of it dominates all their preachings and publications. In this focus
of attention they seem to range themselves as an integrative group
— turned inside out.

Indeed, in their whole sphere of social concerns, the Black
Muslims are a paradox. They are obsessed with the humiliation
of white supremacy, yet they scorn any gesture toward civil rights.
And they respond to racial tensions in all three basic ways: by
aggression, avoidance and acceptance. Their aggression is ex-
treme; their vilification of the white man is impassioned and caus-
tic, with its cardinal tenet the white man's imminent doom. This
aggression has thus far fallen short of physical violence; but few
observers doubt that the Muslims, if they were physically har-
assed, would hesitate to retaliate in kind. At the same time, the
Muslim doctrines of religious and economic separation are a model
of avoidance. And the Muslim dogma of absolute hostility be-
tween the Black Man and the white "devil" is simply an acceptance
of the dogma of the white supremacists, made palatable by revers-
ing the values held to be inherent in "black" and "white." The
Muslim dogma is thus, in great part, a lightly disguised rationaliza-
tion of things as they are, though the Muslims declare that their
destiny is to change the social order rather than to accept and
reinforce it.

248 The Meaning for America

As a religion, the Movement is also a paradox. It is a legiti-
mate Islamic sect; yet it teaches from the Bible, and it rejects
certain of the cardinal Moslem doctrines, notably those of pan-
racial brotherhood and the unique divinity of Allah. The Move-
ment is vauntedly anti-Christian, yet it taunts the white man by
measuring him against his own high Christian principles — a tactic
that implies a strong, though disillusioned, Muslim respect for
Christian ideals. Finally, the Movement is a religion with no
distinct God, no afterlife and no heaven. It is a religion of the
here-and-now. In this, of course, it somewhat resembles Bud-
dhism; but whereas Buddhism is motivated by love, the Black
Muslim Movement is powered and energized by hate.

Yet, for all its paradoxes, the Movement's position on the
spectrum of Negro protest is clear. Whether separatist or integra-
tive, whether aggressive or avoiding or accepting, the Movement
is temperamentally extremist. It is balanced precariously at the
very edge of the spectrum, at the farthest extreme from the serene
near-docility of the Negro Church. If the Movement becomes
significantly more extreme — and this is a possibility that must be
reckoned with — it will no longer be expressing simple protest. It
will have crossed the line to open and violent rebellion.

Function and Dysfunction

The Black Muslims, though they scrupulously obey all the
laws which govern American citizens, do not consider themselves
Americans at heart. They are a separate people, citizens of the
Black Nation, joyously obedient to the laws of Allah as interpreted
by his Messenger, Elijah Muhammad. To affirm and support the
functional structure of American society — the fabric of mutual
interrelationships that holds our many groups and subgroups to-
gether— is the furthest thing from their mind. Yet it is essential
for us to evaluate the Movement, at least tentatively, in terms of
its impact upon the organic unity of our society. Only in this way
can we begin to understand what challenge we are facing and how
we must respond.

Such an evaluation can never be definitive or precise. For
example, America is not perfect, and attempts to cure its imper-

The Meaning for America 249

factions may take the form of serious intergroup conflict. Is this
social conflict functional? Robert K. Merton holds that it is, so
long as it aims at adaptation and adjustment within the system,
not apart from it. This seems to be reasonable, but other observ-
ers disagree;33 and in any case, the line between functional and
dysfunctional social conflict remains hazy. Nor is this the only
difficulty. The same social phenomenon may often be seen as both
functional and dysfunctional (that is, as tending to shatter the
organic unity of the society). To identify it as functional or
dysfunctional, one must try to estimate its ultimate impact on the
social fabric. Such a judgment is hazardous at best. Moreover,
every broad evaluation of a group in these terms is inescapably
subjective, since the benchmark is the observer's own perception
of the nature and limits of our society as an organic whole.

For all these reasons and more, the functional and dysfunc-
tional aspects of the Black Muslim Movement are not always easy
to assess. But an attempt must be made. The Muslims are grow-
ing daily in size and power, and they are determined to have an
impact on our entire way of life.

The Black Muslim Movement is functional for its member-
ship, for the entire Negro community and for the society as a
whole in its insistence upon high standards of personal and group
morality. It encourages thrift, cleanliness, honesty, sexual mor-
ality, diet control and abstinence from intoxicating liquors, and it
effectively reestablishes a center of authority in the home. Mus-
lims are expected to hold steady jobs, to give a full day's work for
their pay and to respect all constituted authority. As a result, the
Movement reduces adult and juvenile delinquency and strengthens
its members' sense of independence and self-respect.

At a deeper level, the Movement provides outlets, short of
physical violence, for the aggressive feelings roused in its members
by the callous and hostile white society. Muslims tend to be
Negroes for whom the pressures of racial prejudice and discrimina-
tion were intolerable, whose increasing resentment and hatred of
the white man demanded release. Unable to rationalize their
deprivations (as Negro intellectuals do) and unable to find relief
in the Christian church or any secular institution, they might well
have followed the downward paths open to the despairing every-

250 The Meaning for America

where — the paths of crime, drunkenness, dope addiction, prosti-
tution and wanton violence, directed indiscriminately against their
oppressors or displaced senselessly against others of the oppressed.
As Muslims, however, they find a "safe" outlet for their tensions
in verbal attacks on the white man and in powerful demonstrations
of group solidarity. Indeed, the Movement is most clearly func-
tional in its regeneration of men and women who, having despaired
of more creative possibilities, found themselves enslaved to de-
structive habits and lost to social usefulness.

The religious awakening which the Movement brings to its
adherents is also functional for the entire society. Many Muslims
had previously been affiliated with no religion; others had been
Christians but found their needs unmet by the characteristic ex-
pressions of the contemporary church. On the whole, it is better
for society for its dissatisfied elements to be associated with some
religion rather than with none. (The specific religious doctrines
of the Movement are, of course, irrelevant here. The organic
unity of American society is not threatened by such articles of
faith as the Muslims' respect for the Quran as the word of Allah
or their belief in Fard as divine.)

In several important ways, the Muslims tend to strengthen
the dignity and self-reliance of the Negro community. They are
proving dramatically that a new, positive leadership cadre can
emerge among American Negroes at the grass-roots level. The
Muslim schools are emphasizing Negro history, Negro achieve-
ments and the contributions of Negroes to the world's great cul-
tures and to the development of the American nation. These facts
are rarely taught in public schools, and the Muslims may be alone
in trying to bring the Negro community to an awareness of its
racial heritage. Again, the Muslims' "buy black" policy is creat-
ing some new opportunities for Negro business and professional
men — opportunities which are almost universally denied them in
the wider community.

The Black Muslims do not, of course, want the Negro com-
munity to share its new-found skills and creative energies with the
despised white man. But their drive to make the Negro aware of
his own potential is nevertheless functional. Despite the Muslims'
appeal for separation, a Negro community awakened at last to

The Meaning for America 251

dignity and self-reliance will be ready to insist upon its status as an
equal partner in the American democratic enterprise.

Finally, the very existence of the Muslims — their extreme
black nationalism and their astonishing growth and vitality — is
functional to the extent that it forces the larger, Christian com-
munity to face the reality of racial tensions, to acknowledge its
own malfeasance and to begin a spiritual and moral reform. The
Muslims' dramatic expression of racial solidarity may shock the
white man into a realization that Negroes will no longer permit
their just demands to be casually shrugged aside. Indeed, Muslim
extremism may even rebound and actively assist the forces of
integration. It may, for example, force a white reappraisal of
other protest organizations, such as the NAACP, which are now
widely resisted as "too pushy" or "radical." If these groups come
to be seen as relatively conservative, if they gain increasing white
support, and if the great surge of Negro protest is constructively
channeled as a result, the Muslims will have proved integrative
despite themselves. But this possibility hangs upon a slender
thread — the hope that America will take the warning and act to
save itself in time.

The Black Muslims' virulent attacks on the white man may
prove to be a useful warning, but they are deeply dysfunctional in
the most immediate sense. They threaten the security of the white
majority and may lead those in power to tighten the barriers which
already divide America. The attacks create guilt and defensiveness
among both Negroes and whites, and offer to extremist elements
on both sides a cover for antisocial behavior. Above all, the
attacks promote a general increase in tension and mutual mistrust.
Calm heads might see the Muslims as a timely warning; jittery
and frightened men are more likely to lash back in an unreasoning
and potentially explosive panic.

These attacks on the white man may also have tragic conse-
quences for international relations. Americans tend to take for
granted that the rising nations of Afro-Asia are Moslem, but few
of us have a clear knowledge of even the major tenets of the
Moslem faith. If the Black Muslims become accepted here as a
legitimate Moslem sect, their doctrines — including their hatred of
the white man — may well be mistaken for orthodox Moslem doc-

252 The Meaning for America

trines, at least by the rank and file. In that case, the true Moslem
ideal of panracial brotherhood would either remain generally
unknown or else be considered an all-too-familiar hypocrisy. Such
a misunderstanding might contribute disastrously to the triggering
of political tensions as the Western and Afro-Asian worlds meet.

Muslim attacks on Christianity, its clergy and its believers
are also immediately dysfunctional. The Muslims' refusal to dis-
tinguish the offenses of individuals from the principles of the
Christian religion is inescapably divisive. The abuse of Negro
women and the lynching of Negro men are not Christian acts. By
identifying them as such, the Muslims are intensifying social dis-
cord and raising still higher the barriers to creative social inter-
action.

But these overt attacks on the white man and his prevailing
religion are, at least, on the surface. They can be watched care-
fully and, to some extent, counteracted. A more insidious dys-
function is implicit in the very premise of the Movement and is
furthered by every Muslim activity, even by those activities whose
functional value must also command respect. This dysfunction is
the deliberate attempt to break all contacts between the Negro and
the white man in America.

Segregation is not, of course, a Muslim innovation. It was
begun and enforced in America by the white man; the Muslims
have added only a black seal of approval. But a deliberate policy
of segregation is always dysfunctional, regardless of its source.

To the extent that the Negroes develop peculiar and exclusive insti-
tutions, they are to that degree isolated from the only culture they
may hope to acquire. The creation of a distinctive Negro culture in
the midst of an advanced and highly complex civilization is mani-
festly impossible. If, because of distinctive temperamental traits, the
Negro group has the capacity to enrich modern culture by a distinc-
tive racial contribution, it can be done by the incorporation of the
group rather than by their exclusion.84

A functional group is one that reinforces not the status quo,
whatever that happens to be, but the organic unity of the society.
Segregation is a dysfunctional part of America's status quo, though
our irresistible trend is toward integration. In siding with the
disease against the cure, the Muslims are profoundly and decisively

The Meaning for America 253

dysfunctional, both to the Negro community and to the society as
a whole.

V. THE DEEPER CAUSE

"Minorities," Gordon Allport has written with wisdom and
insight, "are damned if they seek assimilation, damned if they
don't. . . . What is needed is freedom for both assimilation and
pluralism to occur according to the needs and desires of the
minority group itself."35

The American Negro has chosen to be "American" rather
than "Black," and all his energies have been marshaled to achieve
this goal. He does not want segregation or separation; he wants
only to be an American citizen, with the rights and privileges of
every other citizen. He is not shaken in this determination, even
though he is receiving no significant support from any powerful
factor of the white community. His prolonged and baffling failure
to secure his rights does, however, leave him prey to frustration
and anxiety; and this anxiety is compounded by the emergence of
the "backward" Negroes of Africa into political independence.
American Negroes are horrified to know that they may soon be the
only victims of racial subordination left in the civilized world.

There is general agreement among American Negroes that
the white man has failed to demonstrate any real capacity for
genuine brotherhood and equal justice. There is a widespread
belief that the white man will never of his own accord accept non-
whites as his equals in status and opportunity, in America or else-
where. There is a surprisingly broad conviction that — as the
Muslims insist — the white man has deliberately "written the Negro
out of history," refusing to recognize the Black Man's contribution
to the great Afro-Asian civilizations and, especially, to the devel-
opment of America. The educated Negro is aware that little
popular recognition is given to his forefathers in the stories of "the
men who made America." Of this cultural snub, whether inten-
tional or not, he is increasingly resentful. He has contributed to
the making of America, first as a slave and then as a citizen, and
he wants the recognition and unrestricted citizenship that are his
due.

254 The Meaning for America

The Negro community is not willing to repudiate the Chris-
tian faith, as the Muslims demand. But there is a significant if
silent reservoir of sympathy for the Muslims' racial doctrines.
There is among American Negroes an increasing hostility for the
white man — a hostility born of despair. The world around us is in
cataclysm. It is hard to wait until tomorrow for what everyone
else has today, especially in an atomic age, when tomorrow may
never arrive. The Black Muslim Movement represents one attempt
to break out of this bondage of discrimination and despair, which
now threatens the peace and casts a dark shadow over the happi-
ness and prosperity of all America.

Very many people believe with Harry Ashmore that "the
Muslims are not themselves going anywhere."30 Many others take
comfort in a belief that the Movement has reached the zenith of
its membership and influence. Perhaps it has. But the Muslims
are embarrassing to both the white and the Negro communities:
they call attention to a situation so irrational and so ugly that
neither side wants to face it squarely. It is, therefore, only to be
expected that many people wish the Muslims would simply fold
their tents and go away, and that they will try to hex them away
by refusing to admit that they really exist.

But the Muslims do exist. They do attract the support of
the masses and of a small but increasing number of intellectuals.
And they will continue to expand as long as racial tension is per-
mitted to flourish in America. True, the Movement in its present
form may be crushed by an embarrassed and apprehensive citi-
zenry, white or black. It can be stopped today — and it should be,
if it seriously threatens the peace and security of the nation. But
in shattering the Movement we shall not eliminate the tension and
the need which created and catapulted it to its present momentum.
Out of the ashes of the Black Muslims, another "black" specter
will inevitably rise to challenge us, for we can destroy the Muslim
organization but not the Negro's will to freedom. The essence of
the Black Muslim Movement will endure — an extreme expression
of the American Negro's rising dissatisfaction with the way things
are, and his deepening conviction that this is not the way things
have to be.

The Meaning for America 255

The meaning for America is clear. We must attack the
disease, not its symptoms. We must confront the issue of racism
and discrimination. When we have done so with the determination
and moral conviction so brutal a problem deserves, there will be
no Black Muslims. There will be no need for them. And America
will be a better place for us all

Notes

Preface

1. See Erdmann D. Benyon, "The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Mi-
grants in Detroit," The American Journal of Sociology, XLI1I, No. 6 (May
1938), 894.

Chapter 1

1. Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax, "The Hate that Hate Produced,"
Newsbeat. New York: WNTA-TV, July 10, 1959. This excerpt is from
the unpublished typescript of the television documentary.

2. The author of The Trial is Louis X, a talented and versatile young
Bostonian. Before joining the Muslims, Louis (whose Christian name was
Gene Walcott) had been a popular calypso singer and musician, and had
attended college in North Carolina. He is now Minister of the Boston
Temple of Islam. He and his family were previously Episcopalians; his
wife is a former Roman Catholic.

3. A companion piece, also by Louis X, is Orgena, which seems to
be "A Negro" spelled backwards. Orgena satirizes "Americanized" Negroes
in such stereotyped roles as dope addicts, alcoholics, flashily dressed busi-
nessmen, educators and the "400 set." This is what the white man has
made of them since "kidnapping them from their ancient cultures three
hundred years ago." Near the end of the play, the Muslim faith and the
teachings of Elijah Muhammad restore to the Black Man the traditional
dignity and intelligence he once enjoyed in his own great civilization.
Orgena and The Trial are usually staged on a single bill.

4. Malcolm X, "The Truth About the Black Muslims." An address
at the Boston University School of Theology, May 24, 1960. Italics sup-
plied.

5. Time, August 10, 1959.

6. From a series of street interviews by the author.

7. Nat HentofT, The Reporter, August 4, 1960, p. 40.

8. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History (2d ed.; London: Oxford
University Press, 1935), I, 224.

9. W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole, The Social Systems of American
Ethnic Groups (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945), p. 285.

10. Mike Wallace and Lou Lomax. "The Hate that Hate Produced"
Newsbeat. New York: WNTA-TV, July 10, 1959. [Typescript of a tele-
vision documentary.]

11. See George E. Simpson, "Recent Political Developments in Race
Relations," The Phylon, Second Quarter (Summer 1958), p. 209. Cf. Listen
Pope, The Kingdom Beyond Caste (New York: Friendship Press, 1957),
pp. 64-68.

12. The rejoicing at the Supreme Court's overturning of legalized
segregation in American schools was not quite universal. Says Liston Pope,
"Even the Afrikaans-language press in the Union of South Africa gave

257

258 Notes

extensive attention to it, while generally denying that the situation in the
Union permitted movement in any similar direction." Op. cit., p. 11.

13. "Every part of the United States comes under federal executive
orders that forbid discrimination on some jobs. Fifteen states have laws
against discrimination on most jobs. Thirty-seven cities, many of them
outside these fifteen states, have city ordinances against discrimination on
most jobs." Quoted from Your Rights Under State and Local Fair Employ-
ment Practice Laws (American Federation of Labor and Congress of
Industrial Organizations Publication No. 23 [Washington: 1956]), p. 2.

14. See William Peters, The Southern Temper (New York: Double-
day & Co., 1959), pp. 225-227. Quoting from the Harvard Business Review
(1957), Peters points out inter alia that "The median income of all United
States Negro families is 56 percent of the income of white families —
$2,410 a year as opposed to $4,339. In the South, where conditions are
worse, the median income of Negro families is only about 49 percent of
what white families take in." See also Mr. Peters' discussion on the dearth
of Negroes in federal employment in the South, pp. 241-266. In spite of
federal safeguards against discrimination, Peters finds that ". . . with rare
exceptions, Negroes are not employed above the level of janitorial and
labor services by federal agencies in the South." Cf. The New York Times,
November 16, 1959, p. 1: "A Presidential committee has made what it
considers 'significant breakthroughs' in obtaining skilled jobs for Negroes
in the South. . . . Instead of asking contractors for a generalized and prac-
tically unenforceable commitment not to discriminate, the committee is
now seeking a specific promise to hire Negroes for new jobs immedi-
ately. . . . The committee's new policy has also had results in Border and
Northern areas where Negroes had had a hard time breaking out of menial
factory work. . . . [But] no one on the committee suggests that these
[cited] cases are enough to make a fundamental change in job opportuni-
ties for large numbers of Negroes."

15. See Ebony, Sept. 1960.

16. For several years, the reported number of lynchings has declined.
However, the infamous lynching of Emmett Till, a Negro boy visiting in
Mississippi in 1955, and the lynching of Mack Parker, another Negro in
Mississippi, in April 1959 have again focused international attention upon
the continuing tenuousness of civil security for Negroes in parts of this
country. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, called into the Parker case
at the request of the Mississippi governor, spent $80,000 in an extended
investigation of the lynching. The U. S. Attorney General described the
case as "one of the most complete investigations I've ever seen conducted."
The FBI report was turned over to a Mississippi grand jury, which declined
to call a single FBI witness and adjourned without returning any indictment
whatever. See The New York Times, November 18, 1959, p. 1. Many
Negroes consider the Parker lynching to be little more than "official mur-
der." Parker was left in an unguarded, small-town jail under circumstances
which seemed to invite his abduction and murder. However, killings in this
category are often at the hands of the arresting or detention officials them-
selves, who find it necessary to shoot their unarmed prisoners "in self-
defense" or "to prevent escape." See Peters, The Southern Temper, pp.
214-218, for a description of a double "self-defense" killing by a Southern
sheriff.

17. "The campaign of the whites for 'white supremacy' has, on the
whole, been successful. That is, the Negro has been put and kept in a
subordinate status. The actual story of the Negro since slavery is the story
of this attitude in practice." Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey, The
Mark of Oppression (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1951), p. 61.

18. The Christian Science Monitor (Boston), January 27, 1960, p. 4.

Notes 259

19. Ibid.

20. E. D. Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in
Detroit," The American Journal of Sociology, XLIII (July, 1937 — May,
1938), 896. Nadim Makdisi, editor of the Voice of America's Arabic
service, points out that the second largest Moslem community in America
is concentrated in the Detroit-Dearborn area.

21. Beynon, op. cit., p. 895. From an interview with Sister Denke
Majied, formerly Mrs. Lawrence Adams.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., p. 895.

24. Ibid., p. 896. From an interview with Brother Challar Sharrieff.

25. Ibid. From an interview with Sister Carrie Mohammad.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., p. 897.

28. The New Crusader (Chicago), August 15, 1959, p. 1.

29. Beynon, op. cit., p. 899.

30. Ibid., p. 902

31. Ibid., p. 901.

32. Ibid., p. 897.

33. Ibid., p. 904.

34. "The Truth about the Black Muslims." An address at the Boston
University School of Theology, May 24, 1960.

35. New York Courier, August 6, 1960.

36. See Beynon, op. cit., p. 897.

37. Ibid., p. 898.

38. Temples or missions have also been reported in Cuba, Hawaii
and Jamaica, but the report is unconfirmed.

39. As indicated, this sampling may not be a completely reliable
index. In the first place, it is too small, and the ecological distribution of
the respondents (Atlanta, 34; Chicago, 111; Boston, 183; New York, 133)
does not present an adequate relation to the distribution of the Muslim
membership. Secondly, the sampling was done piecemeal over an extended
period; and since names or other positive identification could not be used,
it is possible that some persons responded more than once.

40. Beynon (op. cit., 898), asserts that "practically none of them
[the Muslims] had been in the North prior to the collapse of the Marcus
Garvey movement." But there are certainly a number of ex-Garveyites in
the movement today, perhaps as many as 10,000-15,000.

41. Beynon, op. cit., p. 905.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, 111.; The Free
Press, 1957), p. 120.

46. The Chicago Sun, October 24, 1942.

47. From a series of interviews with Muslim leaders in Chicago and
New York.

48. Color and Conscience (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1946),
p. 191.

49. Malcolm X, "The Truth About the Black Muslims" (Supra 34).

50. Malcolm X at Boston University Human Relations Center,
February 15, 1960.

51. James Hicks, editor of the New York Amsterdam News and a
close observer of the movement, says: "They have high regard for their
women and fight like hell for each other." The Reporter, August 4, 1960,
p. 39.

260 Notes

52. Malcolm X at Boston University Human Relations Center,
February 15, 1960.

Chapter 2

1. Edmund D. Cronon, Black Moses (Madison: The University of
Wisconsin Press, 1955), p. 66.

2. Arnold Rose, The Negro in America (Boston: Beacon Press,
1948), pp. 17-18.

3. Ibid., p. 16.

4. Ibid., pp. 11-12.

5. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro in the United States (New York:
The Macmillan Co., 1949), p. 88. Quoting Lionel Kennedy and Thomas
Parker, An Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes Charged with
an Attempt to Raise an Insurrection in the State of South Carolina.

6. W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole, The Social Systems of American
Ethnic Groups (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1945), p. 295.

7. Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey, The Mark of Oppression
(New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1951), p. 39. But see a somewhat
broader concept of ethnocentrism in Brewton Berry, Race and Ethnic
Relations (Houghton, 1951), p. 77. Says Berry, "The ethnic group is a
human group bound together by ties of cultural homogeneity. . . . Above
all, there is a consciousness of kind, a we-feeling. The ethnic group may
even regard itself as a race, but the fact of such common descent is of
much less importance than the assumption that there is a blood relationship,
and the myths of the group develop to substantiate such an assumption."

8. For discussion on race, see the following: Ethel Alpenfels, Sense
and Nonsense About Race (New York: Friendship Press, 1957); Ruth
Benedict, Race: Science and Politics (New York: Viking Press, 1950);
Franz Boas, Anthropology and Modern Life (New York: W. W. Norton &
Co., 1928); J. Deniker, The Races of Man (London: Walter Scott Pub-
lishers, 1913); Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life
(New York: Doubleday & Co., 1957); F. H. Hankins, The Racial Basis of
Civilization (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1926); Ben J. Marais, Colour, the
Unsolved Problem of the West (Capetown: Howard B. Timmins, 1952);
Simpson, George E., and Yinger, J. Milton, Racial and Cultural Minorities
in the United States, 1st ed. rev. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958);
W. Ashley Montague, Man's Most Dangerous Myth (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1942); Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (New
York: Doubleday, 1958).

9. "A 'stock' may be defined as the descendants of a large group of
people who once lived in the same geographical area and shared certain
physical traits that are inherited. These traits set them apart from other
groups who have other combinations of physical characteristics." Alpenfels,
Sense and Nonsense About Race, p. 19.

10. See Gunnar Myrdal, "Race and Ancestry," An American Di-
lemma (New York: Harper & Bros., 1944), pp. 113-136. See also John
Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1956); E. Franklin Frazier, Negro in the U.S., n6.

11. W. E. B. Dubois, "Three Centuries of Discrimination," The
Crisis, LIV (December 1947), 362-363. Cf. Melville J. Herskovits: "The
word 'Negro,' as employed in the United States has no biological meaning.
... a social definition takes precedence over the biological reality." Man
and His Works, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), p. 144.

12. Melvin Conant, Race Issues on the World Scene (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1955), p. 119.

Notes 261

13. See Michael Clark's comprehensive article on the "Rise in Racial
Extremism," The New York Times, January 25, 1960, p. 1.

Chapter 3

1. Drew was born in 1866. For a description of his movement, see
Arthur H. Fauset, "Moorish Science Temple of America" in J. Milton
Yinger, Religion, Society, and the Individual (New York: The Macmillan
Co., 1957), pp. 498-507; or see E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro in the VS.,
pp. 358-359.

2. For an enlightening discussion of this 19th-century doctrine, re-
cently resurrected by some American Christians, see Everett Tilson, Segre-
gation and the Bible (Nashville: The Abingdon Press, 1958), pp. 23-26.

3. Arthur H. Fauset. Quoted in Yinger, Religion, Society, and the
Individual p. 498.

4. Yinger, op. cit., p. 500.

5. Ibid., p. 504.

6. Ibid.

I. Dr. George W. B agnail in a discourse entitled, "The Madness of
Marcus Garvey," quoted in Edmund Cronon, Black Moses (Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, 1948), p. 107. Cronon's book is probably the
best recent study of the Garvey Movement.

8. J. Saunders Redding, They Came in Chains (Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Co., 1950), p. 261.

9. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), p. 472.

10. Ibid., pp. 473-474.

II. Ibid., p. 471.

12. Cronon, Black Moses, p. 16.

13. Ibid., p. 17.

14. Redding, They Came in Chains, p. 259.

15. Cronon, Black Moses, p. 41.

16. Garvey's understanding of the American caste system was prob-
ably faulty. In his native Jamaica, the mulattoes formed a more or less
distinct class between the whites and the unmixed blacks. In America, a
Negro is commonly identified as anyone having any Negro ancestry what-
ever; and all Negroes of whatever color are relegated to a common caste.

17. Cronon, op. cit., p. 44.

18. Ibid., p. 47.

19. Ibid.

20. Quoted in ibid., p. 65.

21. Ibid., p. 67.

22. Ibid., p. 70.

23. Ibid., p. 185.

24. Ibid., p. 187.

25. Ibid., p. 184.

26. Ibid., pp. 124-125.

27. Elmer T. Clark, The Small Sects in America, p. 172.

28. Cronon, op. cit., p. 178.

29. Ibid., p. 179.

30. Ibid., pp. 129-132.

31. See E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, 111.: The
Free Press, 1957), p. 123. These Negroes "who were acquiring middle-class
status," Frazier says, "did not only regard his program as fantastic, but they
did not want to associate with his illiterate poor black followers, especially

262 Notes

since West Indians were prominent in the movement." See also, J. Saunders
Redding, op. cit., pp. 260-261.

32. See John Hope Franklin, op. cit., p. 482.

33. Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, p. 260.

34. Cronon, op. cit., pp. 113 ff.

35. Ibid., p. 111.

36. Ibid.

Chapter 4

1. The basic doctrines of the Muslims are laid down in a booklet
written by Muhammad and called The Supreme Wisdom. This is the pri-
mary source book for all that is peculiar to the Muslims and for Muham-
mad's teachings as they appear in the Negro press.

2. Malcolm X at the Boston University Human Relations Center,
February 15, 1960.

3. Supreme Wisdom (2d ed.), pp. 6-7.

4. Ibid., p. 17.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., p. 19.

7. Ibid., p. 21.

8. Ibid., p. 27.

9. Ibid.

10. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," Pittsburgh Courier, August 15, 1959.

11. Malcolm X at Boston University Human Relations Center,
February 15, 1960.

12. Ibid.

13. Supreme Wisdom (2d ed.), p. 33.

14. From a typescript of "The Hate that Hate Produced," a tele-
vision documentary on the rise of Black Racism by Mike Wallace and
Louis Lomax. Newsbeat (New York: WNTA-TV, July 10, 1959).

15. Ibid.

16. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," Pittsburgh Courier, June 16, 1959.
Unless otherwise noted, all excerpts from "Mr. Muhammad Speaks" ap-
peared in his column by that title in the Pittsburgh Courier.

17. Ibid., May 2, 1959.

18. Ibid.

19. The Supreme Wisdom (2d ed.), p. 39.

20. Ibid., p. 33.

21. Malcolm X on Newsbeat.

22. The Supreme Wisdom, p. 38.

23. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," July 4, 1959.

24. Ibid., December 13, 1958.

25. Ibid., July 18, 1959.

26. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," December 13, 1958.

27. The Supreme Wisdom, p. 12.

28. Ibid., p. 13.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., p. 28.

32. Ibid., p. 36.

33. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," January 17, 1959.

34. Ibid., August 9, 1958.

35. From an interview with Malcolm X.

36. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," August 22, 1959.

Notes 263

37. Len Holt, "Norfolk News Beat," Afro-American, August 13,
1960.

38. See The Supreme Wisdom, pp. 21 and 42.

39. Ibid., p. 22.

40. Malcolm X at the Boston University Human Relations Center,
February 15, 1960.

41. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (New York: New American
Library, 1951), pp. 55-56.

42. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," August 9, 1958.

43. From an interview with Elijah Muhammad, March 4, 1959.

44. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 6, 1958.

45. Ibid., January 16, 1960.

46. Ibid., January 30, 1960.

47. Ibid., February 7, 1959.

48. Ibid., August 8, 1959.

49. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 20, 1960.

50. Ibid.

51. Pittsburgh Courier, August 15, 1959, quoting U.S. News and
World Report of August 3, 1959.

52. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," August 9, 1958.

53. Los Angeles Dispatch, January 30, 1960.

54. Afro-American, February 20, 1960.

55. Malcolm X on The Jerry Williams Show, Boston: Radio Station
WMEX, April 2, 1960. From a taped transcription. Italics supplied.

56. Beynon, pp. 905-906.

57. Ibid.

58. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," August 16, 1958.

59. Beynon, op. cit., p. 905.

60. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, January 16, 1960.

61. The Islamic News, July 6, 1959.

62. Chicago Daily Defender, March 5, 1960. In a radio interview
over Boston's station WMEX on April 2, 1960, Malcolm X called for "nine
or ten states."

63. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, July
16, 1960.

64. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," Pittsburgh Courier, August 2, 1958.

65. Ibid., October 11, 1958.

66. At the Boston University Human Relations Center, February 15,
1960.

67. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," August 2, 1958.

68. Ibid., May 3, 1958.

69. Ibid., September 6, 1958.

Chapter 5

1. See Richard T. La Piere, Collective Behavior (New York: Mc-
Graw-Hill Book Co., 1938), pp. 504-510. La Piere describes a mass move-
ment as a spatial movement of a considerable portion of the social popula-
tion to some new, promised land. A movement built around some person
or idea (which need not involve spatial relocation) is termed a "messianic
movement." The messianic movement is built around a "miracle man" or
a "miracle cure" or upon the idea of a "political messiah." "The messianic
movement [is] ... a collective flight from reality . . . following a new
form of leadership which will bring health, wealth or happiness. The

264 Notes

movement begins with the idea that some person ... is a messiah who has
come to deliver the faithful from whatever it is that ails them."

2. I am indebted to Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (New York:
New American Library, 1951), for many of the concepts discussed in this
and the following sections.

3. Hoffer, pp. 52-53.

4. Ibid., pp. 105-106.

5. Ibid., p. 107.

6. Ibid., p. 104. Hoffer quotes John Morley, Notes on Politics and
History (New York: Macmillan Company, 1914), pp. 69-70.

7. Ibid.t p. 18.

8. Ibid., pp. 85-86.

9. Ibid., p. 86.

10. Ibid., pp. 93-94.

11. "The Hate That Hate Produced," Newsbeat (New York:
WNTA-TV, July 10-17, 1959).

12. Time, August 10, 1959.

13. James N. Rhea, Providence Bulletin, August 6, 1959.

14. From an interview with Malcolm X.

15. See "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," The Reader's Digest, March 1960.

16. From a series of Muslim interviews.

17. See, for example, Arna Bontemps, Story of the Negro (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958).

18. From an interview with Minister Louis X. The Muslim

philosophy is limited, and the temple lectures are, without exception, re-
phrasings of statements already made in printed materials, interviews or
public lectures. For the sake of documentary accuracy, the quotations in
this section are drawn from these other sources; but in content and range
they faithfully represent the typical — one might almost say, the universal —
temple lecture.

19. From an interview with Malcolm X.

20. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," September 20, 1958.

21. "Mr. Muhammad Speaks," June 6, 1959.

22. lbid.9 April 18, 1959.

23. Ibid., May 2, 1959.

24. Ibid.

25. The Supreme Wisdom (2d ed.), p. 19.

26. Ibid.

27. From a series of interviews with Muslims.

28. The Supreme Wisdom, p. 51.

29. A translation by Maulana Muhammed Ali and one by Allama
Yusuf Ali are approved for the followers of Elijah Muhammad. Beynon
says of Fard that he "used only the Arabic text which he translated and
explained to the believers . . . [thereby making them] completely de-
pendent upon his interpretation." However, Fard gave his followers texts
he himself prepared which were memorized by all converts, (p. 900.)

30. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 20, 1960.

31. Beynon, op. cit., p. 903.

32. Detroit Free Press, August 14, 1959.

33. Ibid.

34. Mr. Muhammad Speaks, May, 1960.

35. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, July 16, 1960.

36. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 13, 1960.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., January 9, 1960.

39. Ibid., July 30, 1960.

40. Ibid., January 9, 1960.

Notes 265

Chapter 6

1. New York Amsterdam News, July 30, 1960. Reprinted from The
Saturday Review.

2. An address: "The Truth About the Black Muslims." May 24,
1960.

3. Denver Post, August 13, 1959.

4. Malcolm X at the Boston University Human Relations Cen-
ter, February 15, 1960.

5. See Pittsburgh Courier, July 19, 1958. Cf. New York Amsterdam
News, July 12, 1958.

6. See Time, August 10, 1959.

7. Survey by the author; the results will be published later in an
appropriate journal. A small percentage of business and professional men
had clients or customers whom they knew to be Muslims. A very small
percentage had Muslim friends. None had visited a Muslim temple.

8. Sepia, November, 1959, p. 22.

9. Vol. I, No. 1, 1959, pp. 20-21.

10. Pittsburgh Courier, September 12, 1959.

11. Ibid., October 24, 1959.

12. New York Amsterdam News, March 5, 1960.

13. The New Crusader, August 1, 15, 22, 29; September 5, 19, 26;
November 28 (all 1959).

14. The New Crusader, August 29, 1959.

15. Statement issued on August 5, 1959.

16. Quoted in Pittsburgh Courier, September 5, 1959.

17. Chicago Daily Defender, October 3, 1959.

18. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, January 30, 1960.

19. Ibid., January 16, 1960.

20. Ibid.

21. New Jersey Herald News, January 2, 1960.

22. The New York Times, January 25, 1960.

23. Excerpt from a letter to the author, dated February 19, 1960.

24. Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, August 10, 1959.

25. Time, August 10, 1959.

26. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, January 9, 1960.

27. Ibid.

28. Malcolm X at Boston University Human Relations Center*
February 15, 1960.

29. Ibid.

30. New York Courier, July 22, 1960.

31. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, March 5, 1960.

32. New York Amsterdam News, July 16, 1960.

33. Indianapolis Times, August 10, 1959.

34. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, June 5, 1958.

35. New York Amsterdam News, April 26, 1958.

36. The churches involved were St. John's Congregational, Bethel
AME and the Third Baptist Church. Police decided that there had been no
breach of the peace, and no arrests were made. The Springfield Daily
News, February 2, 1959.

37. Chicago's American, February 23, 1960.

38. Pittsburgh Courier, April 26, 1958.

39. The New York Times, January 25, 1960.

40. Pittsburgh Courier, March 3, 1958.

41. Observed personally by the author.

42. Sepia, November, 1959.

43. From an interview with Malcolm X.

266 Notes

44. Detroit Jewish News, August 21, 1959.

45. See Nadim Makdisi, "The Moslems of America," The Christian
Century, August 26, 1959.

46. The Muslim World, Vol. L, No. 1, January, 1960.

47. The (Westchester, N.Y.) Observer, April 19, 1958. See also The
Moslem World and the U.S.A., August, September, 1956.

48. New York Amsterdam News, April 4, 1958.

49. Ibid. May 3, 1958.

50. Malcolm X at the Boston University Human Relations Center,
February 15, 1960.

51. Ibid.

52. "The Truth about the Black Muslims," an address by Malcolm X.

53. Ibid.

54. Time, August 10, 1959, p. 25.

55. The Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 1960.

56. Ibid., August 29, 1959.

57. The Denver Post, August 13, 1959.

58. Providence Bulletin, August 6, 1959.

59. The Boston Herald, February 8, 1960.

60. The Detroit Free Press, August 14, 1959.

61. The Reporter, August 4, 1960, p. 40.

62. The Boston Globe, May 12, 1960.

Chapter 7

1. 1950 population, 4,480.

2. Beynon, op. cit., p. 903.

3. Elijah Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom: Solution to the So-
called Negroes' Problem. (2d ed.; Chicago: The University of Islam, 1957),
p. 15. This booklet first appeared as "Volume I" in 1955 or 1956. The
initial volume was revised and somewhat systematized in a "First Edition"
printed in February 1957. An identical "Second Edition" was printed in
April 1957.

4. Mr. Muhammad Speaks, May 1960.

5. The Supreme Wisdom, p. 43.

6. Nat Hentoff, "Elijah in the Wilderness," The Reporter, August 4,
1960.

7. The Supreme Wisdom (2d ed.), p. 21.

8. The Islamic News, July 6, 1959.

9. Ibid.

10. Mr. Muhammad Speaks, May 1960.

11. September 22, 1942, p. 9.

12. Ibid.

13. The Chicago Sun, October 24, 1942.

14. Malcolm explains that since all Black Men are from the tribe of
Shabazz, his "Muslim" name is theoretically available to any member of
the sect.

15. Alex Haley, Reader's Digest, March 1960.

16. Sepia, November 1959, p. 26.

17. Nat Hentoff, "Elijah in the Wilderness," The Reporter, August 4,
1960, p. 39.

18. Ibid.

19. From unpublished notes by Alex Haley.

20. Beynon, p. 902.

21. Ibid., p. 903.

Notes 267

22. Chicago's American, January 18, 1958, and February 22, 1960.

23. The Pittsburgh Courier, January 18, 1958.

24. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 18, 1960.

25. Ibid.

26. Chicago's American, February 23, 1960.

27. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 18, 1960.

28. Ibid.

29. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 20, 1960.

30. Ibid., February 18, 1960.

Chapter 8

1. Polygamy and snake-handling are common examples. Also, the
courts will usually enforce the education of children up to age sixteen, and
they have uniformly overridden religious objections to hospital care and
such medical attention as blood transfusions, while prohibiting religious
"healers" from claiming professional status.

2. See New York Amsterdam News, Nov. 7, 1959.

3. Cf. Hadley Contril, The Psychology of Social Movements (New
York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1941). pp. 169-210.

4. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life,
trans, by Joseph Ward Swain (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1947), p. 24.

5. Ibid., p. 36.

6. Ibid., p. 37. Cf. J. Milton Yinger, Religion, Society and the Indi-
vidual (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957), p. 14.

7. See Durkheim, op. cit., p. 47.

8. Emst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches,
trans, by Olive Wyon (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1931), 331.

9. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism
(New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1929), pp. 65-67. Cited in Yinger,
Religion, Society and the Individual, p. 151.

10. Yinger modifies Troeltsch's dichotomy of church and sect into a
six-fold typology: universal church, ecclesia, denomination, established sect,
sect and cult. The first five are merely subdivisions of Troeltsch's cate-
gories and are not substantively significant in evaluating the Black Muslim
Movement.

11. J. Milton Yinger, Religion in the Struggle for Power (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1946), p. 22.

12. Yinger, Religion, Society and the Individual, p. 155.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., p. 154.

15. See Elmer T. Clark, The Small Sects in America (New York:
Abingdon Press, 1949), p. 14.

16. See also "The Legalistic or Objectivist Sects," ibid.f p. 23-24.

17. The Supreme Wisdom, p. 4. See also the Introduction to The
Supreme Wisdom, in which a Pakistani Moslem defends Muhammad's
brand of Islam as appropriate for racial circumstances in this country.

18. For a discussion of this Moslem "heresy," see Charles S. Braden,
"Moslem Missions in America," Religion in Life, Summer 1959.

19. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India (London: Victor
Gollancz Ltd., 1946), p. 299.

20. Braden, op. cit., supra.

21. There follows a lengthy description of the ritual and ceremony
incident to entering the Holy City and of the Kaaba, or Black Stone. Los
Angeles Herald-Dispatch, January 30, 1960.

268 Notes

22. Ibid., January 2, 1960.

23. The Islamic News, July 6, 1959.

24. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 2, 1958.

25. The Pittsburgh Courier, April 15, 1958.

26. 76/W., August 15, 1959.

27. 76/W.

28. Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, February 20, 1960.

Chapter 9

1. Arnold and Caroline Rose, America Divided (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1948), p. 218.

2. New York Courier, August 20, 1960.

3. Arnold and Caroline Rose, p. 219.

4. See Carl Wittke, We Who Built America (New York: Prentice
Hall, 1939), for a systematic cataloguing of various national groups in the
United States, their newspapers and societies.

5. Arnold Rose, America Divided (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., 1948), p. 233.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., p. 234.

8. Paul A. Walter, Jr., Race and Culture Relations (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1952), p. 325.

9. Ibid., p. 338.

10. Ibid., p. 328.

1 1 . Black Bourgeoisie, p. 87.

12. Mays and Nicholson, The Negro's Church. Quoted in Simpson
and Yinger, Racial and Cultural Minorities in the United States, p. 583.

13. "Relative Route to Absolute," Time, January 18, I960, p. 48.
Cf. Listen Pope, The Kingdom Beyond Caste (New York: Friendship
Press, 1957), p. 117.

14. Arnold M. Rose, The Negro's Morale (Minneapolis: The Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1949), p. 98.

15. Simpson and Yinger, Racial and Cultural Minorities in the
United States, p. 582.

16. Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, p. 88.

17. Simpson and Yinger, op. cit.

18. Alpha Phi Alpha, 27,000; Kappa Alpha Psi, 20,000; Omega Psi
Phi, 20,000; Phi Beta Sigma, 11,605; Alpha Kappa Alpha, 20,000; Delta
Sigma Theta, 21,000. Harry Hansen (ed.), The World Almanac (New
York: New York World Telegram, 1960), pp. 489-490. Figures for Zeta
Phi Beta and Sigma Gamma Rho were not included in the data offered by
this source. The writer offers 15,000 as a minimum estimate based on
information from members of these sororities.

19. Frazier, The Negro in the United States, p. 382.

20. Ibid.

21. See C. Eric Lincoln, "Anxiety, Fear and Integration," Phylon:
Journal of Race and Culture, September 1960.

22. Whether assimilation presupposed amalgamation is, I believe,
purely academic. Amalgamation is a biological phenomenon, and in the
United States it is also a well documented social fact. Further, amalgama-
tion is cognizant of neither "integration" nor "assimilation"; it is oblivious
of both.

23. W. L. Warner and P. S. Lunt, Status System of a Modern Com-
munity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942), pp. 285-286.

Notes 269

24. J. Saunders Redding, They Came in Chains (New York: J. B.
Lippincott, 1950), p. 225.

25. National Council of Churches Information Service, February 23,
1957, quoting the Independent, p. 2.

26. Redding, op. cit., p. 255.

27. "What is the NAACP?" Information Service (New York: The
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America,
February 23, 1957), p. 1.

28. Interview with the Reverend Mr. McDaniel.

29. Redding, op. cit., p. 229.

30. See C. Eric Lincoln, "The Strategy of a Sit-In," The Reporter,
January 6, 1961, pp. 20-23.

31. Yinger, Religion, Society and the Individual, p. 9.

32. Ibid., p. 10.

33. For an informative discussion of the functional properties of con-
flict, see Raymond Mack and Richard Snyder, "The Analysis of Social
Conflict," Conflict Resolution, Vol. I (June 1957), pp. 212-247. See also
Robin M. Williams, Jr., The Reduction of Intergroup Tensions (New York:
Social Science Research Council), 1947; and Son J. Hager, "Religious Con-
flict," and Robin M. Williams, Jr., "Religion, Value-Orientations, and
Intergroup Conflict," The Journal of Social Issues, Vol. XII, No. 3 (1955).

34. E. B. Reuter, The American Race Problem (New York: Thomas
Y. Crowell, 1927), p. 410.

35. The Nature of Prejudice, pp. 233-234.

36. The Boston Globe, May 12, 1960.

Index

Abdul-Hamid, Soufi, 169

Acceptance, 38-39, 71, 229, 247

Africa, emergence of new nations in,
9-10, 126, 147, 253

African Legion, 60

African Motor Corps, 60

African Orthodox Church, 62, 65

Aggression, 39-40, 41, 229, 247; in-
verted, 40; misdirected, 40, 250;
outlets for, 249-50

Ahmad, Mirza Ghulam; Ahmadiyah
movement, 220-21

Alexander, Sanford, 130

Allah, belief in, 70, 219; Fard iden-
tified with, 16, 21, 72-74, 182, 195

Allport, Gordon, 253

Alpha Kappa Alpha, 238, 268

Alpha Phi Alpha, 237, 268

American Council on Human Rights
(ACHR), 237-38

American Jewish Committee; Amer-
ican Jewish Congress, 232

"American," concept of, 227-28

Amsterdam News (New York),
142, 143-44

Anglo-Saxon Clubs, 60

Anti-Defamation League, 232

Antisegregation organizations, 244-
45; see also Integration

Anti-Semitism, 168-69, 232

Anti-Zionism, 148-49, 166, 224

Arabic, learning of, 125, 127, 219

Asceticism, 29, 91

Ashmore, Harry, 178, 254

Asian- African Drums, 171

Assimilation, 239

Austin, Noel, 138

Avoidance, 35-38, 229, 247

Bahai, 29, 215
Barclay, Edwin, 61
Bates, Mrs. Daisy, 149, 150
Bell, Derrick, 148

Berry, Edwin C, 152
Beynon, Erdman, 23, 24, 199, 201
Bible, 11, 13, 206, 219, 248
Biological distinctiveness, 46, 47
Biological re-purification, 89-90
Biracial organizations, 145-52, 238-

46

Black Cross Nurses, 60
Black Eagle Flying Corps, 60
Black Muslim Movement, 4-6; aims
of, 27, 84-97, 98, 210; attraction
of, 27-32, 108-9, 113; beginnings
of, 10-17, 66, 72-74; black na-
tionalism and, 34, 66; commercial
enterprises of, 24, 60, 63, 64, 93;
doctrines and mythology of, 68-
80, 104, 220, 247; economic and
political power of, 17-20, 196;
factionalism in, 15-16, 179-209;
foreign contacts of, 26, 171-72;
functional and dysfunctional as-
pects of, 248-53; and international
politics, 223-26; and Jewish com-
munity, 165-69; as a mass move-
ment, 106-34; media of communi-
cation of, 129-34; membership of,
21-27, 85, 98-101, 106, 108, 111-
15, 126; money problems of, 17-
18, 20, 88, 90-93, 119, 123-24,
130; morality of, 55, 67, 80-83,
164; and the Negro community,
135-64; "open" rallies of, 175;
and orthodox Islam, 169-72, 196,
210-26; schools of, 14, 26, 32,
126-28, 250; as social and reli-
gious movement, 212-23, 246-53;
temples of, 11, 22, 24, 26, 81-82,
107, 115-26, 181, 184, 185-186,
194, 197, 198; and white com-
munity, 172-78

Black nationalism, 23, 33, 43-46,
251; characteristics of, 50; and
social class, 46-49; see also Moor-

270

Index

271

ish Science movement and Gar-

vey, Marcus

Black Star Steamship Line, 60, 64
Black supremacy, 49, 76, 145, 147,

153, 177
B'nai B'rith, 232
Boston, Black Muslims in, 129, 134,

185; passing in, 36; Temple 11 in,

193

Boston Globe, 178
Boston Herald, 176, 177
Boule, the, 237
Brotherhood, as a tenet of Islam,

125, 220, 252
Brown, Earl, 138
Bunche, Ralph, 88, 131, 139, 241
Burley, Dan, 133
Bus strike, Montgomery, Ala., 137,

161, 244

Business, Negro, and Black Mus-
lims, 140-41, 161, 162
"Buy black" policy, 20, 93, 250

Caste society, 38, 108

Castro, Fidel, 18

Chalmers, Allan Knight, 241

Chicago, commercial enterprises in,
93; Moorish Science movement
in, 52; Muslim schools in, 26, 32;
proposed Islamic Center in, 97,
128; race riot in, 56; Temple 2
in, 16, 17, 182

Chicago Daily Defender, 144

Christian Science Monitor, 140, 176,
177

Christianity, as counterpressure to
black nationalism, 49; modifica-
tion of attacks on, 206; and
Moorish Science movement, 54;
Negro believers In, 31, 67, 69-70,
123, 205-6 (see also Churches,
Negro); Negro clergy and, 79-80;
repudiation of, 26-27, 28-29, 121,
122-23, 132, 152, 248, 252; and
white supremacy, 28, 78-80, 131

Church, description of, 214-15, 267

Churches, Negro, 33, 62, 155-59, 163,
207, 234-35; white, controversies
in, 221-22; white, racial bias in,
28, 114, 158, 221, 234-35

Citizenship, limited, 174, 175, 228;

unrestricted, desire for, 253
Clergy, Negro, 79-80, 153-54, 155-

58, 234-35
Colonialism, 9, 28
Colored Knights of Pythias, 236
Committee on Racial Equality

(CORE), 155, 245
Communist party, 16
Conduct, rules of, for Black Mus-
lims, 29, 67, 80-83, 90-92, 105,
128, 132, 164; for the Moors, 55
Court cases, Muslims, 204-5
Cult, 216-17, 267; Black Muslims
as, 106, 217; Ras Tafarian, 50, 58
Cultural heritage, Jewish, 231; Ne-
gro, 48, 58, 250

David X, 159

Dawud, Talib Ahmad, 144, 170-71

Death, contempt for, 103

Declaration of the Rights of the
Negro Peoples of the World, 59

Delinquency, absence of, 25, 32, 115

Delta Sigma Theta, 238, 268

Denver Post, 176, 177

Depression, 12, 24

Desegregation. See Integration

Detroit, Fard in, 10-11, 72; mi-
grants to, 21; Muslim schools in,
32

Detroit Free Press, 176, 177

Diab, Jamil, 26, 170

Dietary laws, 81, 91, 219

Discrimination, in employment and
political affairs, 8, 88; in the
North, 21; responses to, 35-40,
71, 229, 247

Divorce, 55, 82

"Double duty dollar," 43

Drew, Noble (Timothy), 13, 23, 50,
51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 66

DuBois, W. E. B., 45, 64, 240

Durkheim, Emile, 213

Eason, James W. H., 64-65
Economic program, Muslim, 17-18,

20, 88, 90-93, 119, 123-24, 130
Economic separation, 20, 88, 90-93,

247

Elks, Order of, 236-37
Equality, of ministers and "broth-

272

Index

ers," 90; NAACP policy of, 241;
of sexes, 31-32, 83
Ethiopia, 33-34; interest of, in Mus-
lims, 16

Faith, Negro, in white decency, 227-

29, 246; unity through, 103-4
Fard, Wallace D., 10-14, 15, 16,

66, 73, 106, 180, 181, 182, 183
Federal Bureau of Investigation,

94, 187, 211
Federation of Islamic Associations,

170, 219

"Folk Negroes," 38, 229
Fraternal organizations, 231, 235-37
Fraternities and sororities, 237-38
Frazier, E. Franklin, 234, 237
Freedom, will to, 161, 254
Freeman, Andrew G., 152
Freemasonry, 13, 236
Fruit of Islam, 14, 30, 82, 118, 184,

185, 193, 199-203
Fuller, S. B., 129

Gallagher, Buell, 27, 28

Garvey, Marcus; Garvey movement,
8, 23, 25, 42, 50, 56-66, 72, 94,
164, 208

Ghetto, Black, 25, 37, 90, 167; Jew-
ish, 165

Granger, Lester B., 151, 152

Greek letter societies, 237

Group consciousness, 34-35; see also
Race consciousness

Group identification, 229-34

Group solidarity, 247; see also
Unity

Hajj Committee, 171

Harlem, 18, 143, 192

Harris, Robert, 13, 204

Hate groups, 151, 153, 177

Hatred, as basis of Muslim move-
ment, 67, 112, 114, 147, 207, 208,
218, 221, 248; denial of teaching
of, 186, 209; in a mass move-
ment, 105-6; self, 35, 70

Hentoff, Nat, 134, 140

Herald-D is patch ( Los Angeles ) ,
129-31, 142, 143, 148, 153, 204

History, Negro, emphasis on, 32,

120, 121, 126, 250; reconstruc-
tion of, 44, 58

Hoffer, Eric, 83, 105

Holy Koran, 53

Human sacrifice, 13, 204

Income, annual, 20, 258

Independent Episcopalian Church,
62

Indian ancestry, 46

In-group organizations, 231

Integration, of busses in Montgom-
ery, 137, 161, 244; definition of,
239; of eating places in South,
230; importance of, to biracial
organizations, 238-39; Muslim at-
tacks on, 88-89, 124-25, 161;
steps toward, 7-8

Integrative organizations, 145-52,
238-46, 247

Intellectuals, Negro, 29, 111, 139-
40, 254

Intermarriage, rejection of, 47, 89

International interest in Muslims, 16

International relations, 223-26, 251-
52

Islam, orthodox, 144, 223; in Amer-
ica, 169-72, 223; Black Muslims
and, 210-26; confusion of doc-
trines of Black Muslims and, 251-
52; international, 168, 171, 212;
political issues and, 223-26; as
religion of peace, 119-20, 125; see
also Black Muslim Movement

Islamic Center, proposed, 97, 128

Islamic News, 133

Israel, 96, 166, 168

Jack, Hulan, 138

James, Minister, 197-98

James, William M., 158

Japan, interest of, in Black Mus-
lims, 16, 26; Muhammad's sym-
pathy for, 26, 188

Japanese- Americans, 232-33

Jeremiah X, 197, 198

Jesus, 54, 74-75, 78, 123; Black, 62

Jews, aggression against, 40, 168,
232; associations of, 231-232; and
Black Muslims, 165-69; cultural
heritage of, 231; in NAACP, 149,

Index

273

167

Johnson, Gabriel, 59
Johnson, James Weldon, 64
Jones, Eugene Kinkle, 64
Judaism, attack on, 131, 131; see

also Jews

Kappa Alpha Psi, 237, 238, 268

Karriem, Isaiah, 194

Karriem, Robert, 204

Keating, Kenneth B., 169

Kilroe, Edwin P., 62

King, Charles D. B., 63

King, Martin Luther, 138, 145, 152,

153, 154, 155, 244
Ku Klux Klan, 57, 60, 163, 190,

245

Lawson, James, 150

Leadership, individual Negro, 135-
41, 163, 173; institutional Negro,
145-55; in a mass movement,
101-3, 105; Negro, Muslim attack
on, 131, 139

Leavell, Balm L., Jr., 144

Liberia, 59, 61, 63

Little, Malcolm. See Malcom X

Lomax, Louis, 134

Los Angeles, 5; Black Muslim mem-
bership in, 178

Los Angeles Herald-Dispatch, 129-
31, 142, 143, 148, 153, 204

Lottie X, 194

Louis X, 31, 71, 113, 193, 198

Love, in Buddhism, 248; as Chris-
tian principle, 152, 207; in Moor-
ish Science movement, 54; in
UNIA, 57

Lower class, Negro, 46, 67, 163-64;
and black nationalism, 48-49; pre-
dominance of, among Black Mus-
lims, 23-25, 85; sects of, 215

Lucius X, 194, 198-99

Lynchings, 56, 240, 258

McDaniel, J. A., 242
McGuire, George Alexander, 62
Malcolm X, 4, 7, 18, 19, 31, 67, 68,
69, 71, 82, 87, 94, 95, 96, 110, 112,
113, 115, 116, 130, 132, 134, 137,
138-39, 141, 148, 150, 151, 154,

157, 166, 169, 172, 173, 175, 178,

183, 189-92, 193, 195-96, 197,

198, 204, 205, 207-8, 222, 223,

224, 225
Males, predominance of, in Muslim

membership, 23 31; role of, 31,

32, 55, 82, 83

Marshall, Thurgood, 138, 148, 241
Mass movement, 83, 98-106, 108,

212, 263-64; Black Muslims as,

106-34

Mays, Benjamin, 234, 241
Mecca, pilgrimage to, 219, 222, 226
Membership, Black Muslim, 21-27,

85, 98-101, 106, 108; application

for, 109-10, 180; recruitment of,

111-15, 126
Memphis, desegration in, 159-60;

passing in, 36
Merton, Robert K., 249
Messenger, 64, 132-33, 141
Methodist Church, 215, 234-35
Middle class, Negro, 46, 47-48, 64,

160-62, 215
Ming, Robert, 128
Ministers, Muslim, 14, 15, 118-26,

156

Minorities, 230, 253
Miscegenation, disdain for, 47, 89
Mr. Muhammad Speaks, 133, 134
Mr. Muhammad Speaks to the

Blackman, 133, 145
Mohammad, Farrad. See Fard,

Wallace D.

Montgomery Improvement Associa-
tion, 244-45
Moorish Science movement, 26, 50,

51-55, 164
Morality, personal, 55, 67, 80-83,

164

Mormon Church, 222
Moslem World and the U.S.A., 172
Moslems, orthodox, 210-26; in

America, 169-72, 223; see also

Islam

Muhammad, Abdul, 15, 16
Muhammad, Akbar, 127, 194
Muhammad, Elijah, 4, 6, 14-15,
16-17, 21, 23, 55, 60, 71, 72, 75,

77, 84, 90, 93, 94, 97, 105, 126,

128, 137-38, 142, 145, 157, 163,

274

Index

169, 175, 180-89, 192, 193, 194-
95, 248; and Allah, 73; appear-
ance of, 183-84; arrests of, 94,

127, 143, 187-88; attitude of, to
upper-class Negroes, 85, 111-12;
denial of hate-monger ing by, 186,
209; on eating pork, 81; and
Fard, 180, 181, 182, 183; goals
of, 86, 87, 92, 95, 96; at home,
25, 112; hostility of, to white
man, 112, 122, 136, 161, 208;
as leader, 106, 107, 108, 171,
179, 217; on NAACP, 146-47;
and Nasser, 224-25; news column
of, 129; on Original Man, 76; on
orthodox Islam, 219, 220; pil-
grimage of, to Mecca, 222, 226;
political power of, 18-19; press
reports on, 176, 177, 178; pro-
Japanese sentiment of, in World
War II, 26, 188; on regeneration,
82, 115; on self-reliance, 83, 89;
on unity, 158-59, 162, 186

Muhammad, Elijah, Jr., 194, 200
Muhammad, Herbert, 194
Muhammad, Wallace D., 116, 149,

194, 195, 199
Muslim Brotherhood of America,

219
Muslim Girls Training Class, 14,

128, 194

Myrdal, Gunnar, 239, 244
Mythology, Muslim, 68-80

Naeem, Abdul Basit, 171-72

Name, changing of, by Jews, 231-
32; by Muslims, 109-11, 121-22;
"slave," 109, 110, 121

Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 172, 224, 225

National Association for the Ad-
vancement of Colored People
(NAACP), 64, 65, 98, 130, 145-
51, 160, 167, 238, 239-42, 251

National Movement for the Estab-
lishment of a Forty-Ninth State,
66

National Union of People of Afri-
can Descent, 66

Nationalism, black, see Black na-
tionalism; political, 56-66; reli-
gious, 51-55, 61-62; white, 228,

229

"Negritude," 45

Negro World, 58, 63

Negroes, churches of, 33, 62, 155-
59, 163, 207, 234-35; concern
over Black Muslims among, 135-
64; "folk," 38, 229; fraternal
organizations of, 231, 235-37; fra-
ternities and sororities of, 237-38;
heritage of, 48, 58, 250; increas-
ing hostility of, to whites, 253-54
(see also Hatred); as integral
part of American society, 136,
253; integrative organizations of,
238-46; the man in the street,
159-64; the moderate, 72; physi-
cal traits of, 6, 46, 47; range of
protest of, 227-34, 246-48; sepa-
ratist organizations of, 234-38;
term "Negro" rejected by, 48,
68; will to freedom of, 161, 254

New Crusader (Chicago), 144-45

New York City, Garvey movement
in, 58, 59; Negro organizations
in, 33; Temple 7 in, 24, 198

Nkrumah, 69, 147

Nonviolence, 155; in Black Muslim
Movement, 4, 114, 132, 199; in
sit-in movement, 245, 246

Norris, Frank, 13

Odd Fellows, 236
Omega Psi Phi, 237, 268
Orgena, 113, 193
Original Man, 75-76, 121
Overton, L. Joseph, 150-51
Ovington, Mary White, 240
Owen, Chandler, 64

Pan-Islamic movement, 27-28

Parker, Mrs. Rosa, 159

Passing, 36

Passive resistance, 137; opposition
to, 152, 155; see also Nonvio-
lence

Pastors' organizations, 155-56

Peace Movement of Ethiopia, 66

Phi Beta Sigma, 237, 268

Philbert X, 194

Pittsburgh Courier, 106, 129, 142-
43, 148

Index

275

Political affairs, discrimination in,
8, 88

Political tensions, Western and
Afro-Asian worlds, 251-52

Politicians, Black Muslims and, 138-
39

Poole, Elijah. See Muhammad, Eli-
jah

Powell, Adam Clayton, 18, 138,

139, 192
Prayer, 80, 118, 219

Press, Negro, 106, 107, 112, 129-
31, 141-45; white, 106, 107-8,

140, 176-78

Protest organizations, 232-33, 235,

246-53

Providence Bulletin, 176, 177
"Psychological insulation," 139-40
Publications, Black Muslim, 132-34,

141, 145

Quran (Qur'an), 11, 13, 53, 125,
172, 219

Race consciousness, 9, 56, 62, 67,
93, 161, 208-9; lack of, in Orien-
tal religion, 51, 252
Race pride, 43, 56, 57, 58, 161, 162
Race riots, 56, 240
Racial dichotomy, 6-7
Racial equality, NAACP policy of,
241; see also Integrative organi-
zations

Racial heritage, Negro, 48, 58, 250
Racial purity, nonexistence of, 45
Racial solidarity. See Unity
Racism, 34, 39, 151, 158, 169, 221
Radio programs, 134, 177-78
Randolph, A. Philip, 64, 241
Ras Tafarian cult, 50, 58
Reader's Digest, 107, 140
"Red Summer" of 1919, 8, 56
Redding, J. Saunders, 239, 242
Rehabilitation, 29, 82, 111, 114-15,

190, 250

Religion, 246; in background of
Muslims, 26; beliefs and rites of,
213; in Black Muslim Movement,
212-23, 250; freedom of, in
America, 210, 212; nationalism
in, 51-55, 61-62; types of groups

in, 214-17

Reporter magazine, 140, 176, 178
Respectability, search for, 200, 204-

9, 214
Responsibility, emphasis on, 30, 32,

55; of Negro fraternities and

sororities, 238

Ritual requirements, 80, 118, 219
Robinson, Jackie, 138, 155
Rogers, J. A., 138
Rose, Arnold, 230
Rozier, Theodore, 26, 182, 196
Rutherford, Joseph F., 13

Salaam, 133

"School case" decision, 7, 244, 257-
58

Schools, Black Muslim, 14, 26, 32,
126-28, 211, 250

Schuyler, George S., 142

Sect, 214, 215, 267; Black Muslims
as, 218-23, 248

Segregation, 41; directed at class,
not individual, 47; as Black Mus-
lim policy, 252; see also Integra-
tion

Self-assurance, 116

Self-discipline, 91, 104, 105, 137,
161, 194

Self-hatred, 35, 70

Self-image, 43, 48, 205

Self -improvement, 37, 57

Self-sacrifice, 103-4

Separation, economic, 20, 88, 90-93,
247; political, 4, 10, 46, 72, 88,
94-97, 129, 137; racial, 87-90, 196

Separatism, 154, 174, 247; white,
234

Separatist organizations, 234-38, 247

Sex roles, 31, 32, 55, 82, 83; see
also Males and Women

Sharrieff, Raymond, 85, 130, 133,
184, 193, 195, 199, 200

Sherrill, William L., 65

Sit-in movement, 20, 79, 152, 154,
155, 159-60, 161, 245

Slave insurrections, 41, 43, 44

Slavery, mental, 69, 122, 180

Social class, black nationalism and,
24, 46-49

Social distinctiveness, 46, 47

276

Index

Social protest, 218, 227-34, 235;
Black Muslims as vehicle of, 246-
53

Sociology, data of, 6-7

South, black nationalism in, 33; de-
segragation in, 159-60, 230; posi-
tion of churches in, on slavery,
222; violation of etiquette rules
in, 36, 40

Southern Christian Leadership Con-
ference, 244

Southern Regional Council, 245

Spanish-speaking Americans, 233

Springfield, III., race riot in, 240

Staton, Dakota, 171

Steinbeck, John, 136

Stereotype, 41-42, 54, 119, 168

Stone, Chuck, 134

Stout, Bill, 177-78

Supreme Court, NAACP cases in,
241; "school case" decision of, 7,
244, 257-58

Supreme Wisdom, 124, 132, 180

Takahashi, Major, 16, 26
Television, 107, 134, 177-78
Temples, Black Muslim, 16, 17, 22,

24, 26, 81-82, 107, 181, 182, 184,

185-86, 194, 197, 198; visit to,

115-26

Thelma X, 194
Theosophists, 215
Time magazine, 107, 140, 142-43,

176

Tobacco, prohibition of, 81, 164
Toure, President and Mrs. Seku, 150
Toynbee, Arnold, 6
Trial, The, 113
"Trials" of Muslims, 201
Troeltsch, Ernst, 214, 216
Truman, Harry, 42
Tynetta X, 194

"Union-busting" interest in Mus-
lims, 16

United African Nationalist Move-
ment, 50, 66, 150

United Arab Republic, 223-25

United League of Latin American
Citizens (ULLAC), 233

Unity, Black Muslim, 27, 30, 247;
cultural, 45; instruments of, 103-
6; of a mass movement, 99,
103-6; of a minority, 230; racial,

70, 84-87, 92, 146, 159, 160, 186,

238

Universal Negro Improvement As-
sociation, 50, 56-66; see also Gar-

vey, Marcus
Universities of Islam, 14, 26, 127,

211

Up From Slavery, 57
Upper class, Negro, 46-47, 111-12,

156
Urban League, 64, 98, 151-52, 242-

44

Vesey, Denmark, 43-44

Visibility, of Japanese-Americans,
232; of Jews, among Negroes,
167; of Negroes, 36, 46, 47

Vote, restrictions on, 8, 88

Voting behavior of Muslims, 18, 19

Wallace, Mike, 107, 134
Walling, William English, 240
Walters, Col., 138
Warner, W. Lloyd, 6, 44, 234
Washington, Booker T., 57
Washington, D. C., race riot in, 56;

Temple 4 in, 194, 198
Weapons, prohibition of, 107, 117-

18

White ancestry of Negroes, 46, 47
White men, and Black Muslims,

172-78, 210; enslavement of

blacks by, 77-78; origin of, 76-77
White supremacy, 240, 258; and

Christian church, 28, 78-80, 131
Wilfred X, 182, 194
Wilkins, Roy, 138, 147, 151, 155,

241

Williams, Jerry, 134
Women, forbidden contact with

whites, 172; as leaders in Black

Muslim Movement, 194; role of,

31,32, 55, 83
World War II, 188

X as symbol in names, 1 10

Yakub, 76, 77

Yaslum, Gulam, 170

Yinger, J. Milton, 214, 215, 216, 217

Young, L. Masco, 133

"Young Blacks," 31

Zionism, 60, 148-49, 166